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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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BACKLOG STUDIES 



BY 



i 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

AUTHOR OF "SAUNTERINGS," " MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN," ETC. 



WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS 
BY AUGUST US HOP PIN 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Cue fitoersiDe }9rr£& Cambri&jje 

1900 



Library of Congress 

Two Copies Received 
NOV 23 1900 

Copyright entry 

J}urv. iS't'yoo 

SECOND COPY 

Delivered to 

0KUt« OtVfStON 

DEC 22 1900 



No 






Copyright, 1872, 
By JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY. 

Copyright, 1900, 
By SUSAN LEE WARNER, 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge , Mass., U. S. A. 
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



CONTENTS 



♦ 

Pagb 

First Study i 

Second Study 23 

Third Study . 51 

Fourth Study ....... 78 

Fifth Study 105 

Sixth Study 137 

Seventh Study 166 

Eighth Study .... 181 

Ninth Study 212 

Tenth Study 241 

Eleventh Study . ...... 259 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Drawn by Augustus Hoppin. 

♦— 

i. Peace at the Fireside , Frontispiece. 

FIRST STUDY. 

2. Headpiece. The Fire-Tender cutting Back- Logs . . . x 

SECOND STUDY. 

3. Headpiece. Cupid writing Love-Letters on Birch-Bark ... 23 

THIRD STUDY. 

4. Headpiece. Andirons Talking . . . . . . . .51 

5. Tailpiece. Big Violin in a Storm ....... 77 

FOURTH STUDY. 

6. Headpiece. Ghost appearing from the Flame ..... 78 

7. Tailpiece. Devil Smoking 104 

FIFTH STUDY. 

8. Headpiece. Young Girl in Hammock 105 

q. Tailpiece. Child decorating Bust 136 

SIXTH STUDY. 

10. Headpiece. The Fire-Tender reading in his Winter Garden . . 137 

11. Tailpiece. Spring Bird arriving from the South .... 165 

SEVENTH STUDY. 

12. Headpiece. Studying Gothic Architecture in the Woods . . . 166 

13. Tailpiece. A Modern Goth in Church behind Pillars and unable to 

see the Preacher 180 

EIGHTH STUDY. 

14. Headpiece. Tailor-Cupids riding on a Goose ..... 181 

15. Tailpiece. Woman rules the World 211 

NINTH STUDY. 

16. Headpiece. Cupid seated by a Burning Log, fans the Flame . . 212 

17. Tailpiece. Shears cutting up Poems 240 

TENTH STUDY. 

18. Headpiece. Visiting the Old Man 241 

19. Tailpiece. Monkey copying a Bust ...... 258 

ELEVENTH STUDY. 

2a Headpiece. Bringing Home the Yule Log 259 

21. Tailpiece. Cupids ringing Christmas Chimes . 281 




HE fire on the hearth has almost 
£ gone out in New England ; the hearth 
vg t has gone out ; the family has lost 
its centre ; age ceases to be respected ; sex 
is only distinguished by the difference between 
millinery bills and tailors' bills ; there is no 
more toast-and-cider ; the young are not al- 
lowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at 
night ; half a cheese is no longer set to toast 
before the fire ; you scarcely ever see in front 
of the coals a row of roasting apples, which 
a bright little girl, with many a dive and 
start, shielding her sunny face from the fire 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



with one hand, turns from time to time ; 
scarce are the gray-haired sires who strop 
their razors on the family Bible, and doze 
in the chimney-corner. A good many things 
have gone out with the fire on the hearth. 

I do not mean to say that public and pri- 
vate morality have vanished with the hearth. 
A good degree of purity and considerable hap- 
piness are possible with grates and blowers ; it 
is a day of trial, when we are all passing through 
a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be puri- 
fied as we are dried up and wasted away. Of 
course the family is gone, as an institution, 
though there still are attempts to bring up a 
family round a " register." But you might just 
as well try to bring it up by hand, as without the 
rallying-point of a hearthstone. Are there any 
homesteads nowadays ? Do people hesitate to 
change houses any more than they do to change 
their clothes ? People hire houses as they would 
a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to ap- 
pear for a year in a little fictitious stone-front 
splendor above their means. Thus it happens 
that so many people live in houses that do not 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



tit them. I should almost as soon think of 
wearing another person's clothes as his house ; 
unless I could let it out and take it in until it 
fitted, and somehow expressed my own character 
and taste. But we have fallen into the days of 
conformity. It is no wonder that people con- 
stantly go into their neighbors' houses by mis- 
take, just as, in spite of the Maine law, they wear 
away each other's hats from an evening party. 
It has almost come to this, that you might as 
well be anybody else as yourself. 

Am I mistaken in supposing that this is owing 
to the discontinuance of big chimneys, with wide 
fireplaces in them ? How can a person be at- 
tached to a house that has no centre of attraction, 
no soul in it, in the visible form of a glowing fire, 
and a warm chimney, like the heart in the body ? 
When you think of the old homestead, if you ever 
do, your thoughts go straight to the wide chim- 
ney and its burning logs. No wonder that you 
are ready to move from one fireplaceless house 
into another. But you have something just as 
good, you say. Yes, I have heard of it. This 
age, which imitates everything, even to the vir- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



tues of our ancestors, has invented a fireplace, 
with artificial, iron, or composition logs in it, 
hacked and painted, in which gas is burned, so 
that it has the appearance of a wood fire. This 
seems to me blasphemy. Do you think a cat 
would lie down before it ? Can you poke it ? If 
you can't poke it, it is a fraud. To poke a wood 
fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything 
else in the world. The crowning human virtue 
in a man is to let his wife poke the fire. I do 
not know how any virtue whatever is possible 
over an imitation gas log. What a sense of 
insincerity the family must have, if they indulge 
in the hypocrisy of gathering about it. With 
this centre of untruthfulness, what must the life 
in the family be ? Perhaps the. father will be 
living at the rate of ten thousand a year on a 
salary of four thousand ; perhaps the mother, 
more beautiful and younger than her beautified 
daughters, will rouge ; perhaps the young ladies 
will make wax-work. A cynic might suggest as 
the motto of modern life this simple legend, — 
" Just as good as the real." But I am not a cynic, 
and I hope for the rekindling of wood fires, and a 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 5 

return of the beautiful home light from them. If 
a wood fire is a luxury, it is cheaper than many 
in which we indulge without thought, and cheaper 
than the visits of a doctor, made necessary by the 
want of ventilation of the house. Not that I 
have anything against doctors ; I only wish, after 
they have been to see us in a way that seems so 
friendly, they had nothing against us. 

My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly three 
feet wide, has a broad hearth-stone in front of it, 
where the live coals tumble down, and a pair of 
gigantic brass andirons. The brasses are bur- 
nished, and shine cheerfully in the firelight, and 
on either side stand tall shovel and tongs, like 
sentries, mounted in brass. The tongs, like the 
two-handed sword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by 
puny people. We burn in it hickory wood, cut 
long. We like the smell of this aromatic forest 
timber, and its clear flame. The birch is also a 
sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual 
flame and an even temper, — no snappishness. 
Some prefer the elm, which holds fire so well ; 
and I have a neighbor who uses nothing but apple- 
tree wood, — a solid, family sort of wood, fragrant 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



also, and full of delightful suggestions. But few 
people can afford to burn up their fruit-trees. 
I should as soon think of lighting the fire with 
sweet-oil that comes in those graceful wicker- 
bound flasks from Naples, or with manuscript 
sermons, which, however, do not burn well, be 
they never so dry, — not half so well as printed 
editorials. 

Few people know how to make a wood fire, but 
everybody thinks he or she does. You want, 
first, a large backlog, which does n<5t rest on the 
andirons. This will keep your fire forward, radi- 
ate heat all day, and late in the evening fall into 
a ruin of glowing coals, like the last days of a 
good man, whose life is the richest and most be- 
neficent at the close, when the flames of passion 
and the sap of youth are burned out, and there 
only remain the solid, bright elements of charac- 
ter. Then you want a forestick on the andirons ; 
and upon these build the fire of lighter stuff. In 
this way you have at once a cheerful blaze, and 
the fire gradually eats into the solid mass, sink- 
ing down with increasing fervor ; coals drop 
below, and delicate tongues of flame sport along 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



the beautiful grain of the forestick. There are 
people who kindle a fire underneath. But these 
are conceited people, who are wedded to their 
own way. I suppose an accomplished incendiary 
always starts a fire in the attic, if he can. I am 
not an incendiary, but I hate bigotry. I don't 
call those incendiaries very good Christians who, 
when they set fire to the martyrs, touched off the 
fagots at the bottom, so as to make them go slow. 
Besides, knowledge works down easier than it 
does up. Education must proceed from the more 
enlightened down to the more ignorant strata. 
If you want better common schools, raise the 
standard of the colleges, and so on. Build your 
fire on top. Let your light shine. I have seen 
people build a fire under a balky horse ; but he 
would n't go, he 'd be a horse-martyr first. A 
fire kindled under one never did him any good. 
Of course you can make a fire on the hearth by 
kindling it underneath, but that does not make it 
right. I want my hearth-fire to be an emblem of 
the best things. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



II. 

It must be confessed that a wood fire needs as 
much tending as a pair of twins. To say nothing 
of fiery projectiles sent into the room, even by 
the best wood, from the explosion of gases con- 
fined in its cells, the brands are continually drop- 
ping down, and coals are being scattered over 
the hearth. However much a careful house- 
wife, who thinks more of neatness than enjoy- 
ment, may dislike this, it is one of the chief 
delights of a wood fire. I would as soon have 
an Englishman without side-whiskers as a fire 
without a big backlog ; and I would rather have 
no fire than one that required no tending, — one 
of dead wood that could not sing again the im- 
prisoned songs of the forest, or give out in bril- 
liant scintillations the sunshine it absorbed in 
its growth. Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the 
spice of danger in it gives zest to the care of 
the hearth-fire. Nothing is so beautiful as 
springing, changing flame, — it was the last 
freak of the Gothic architecture men to repre- 
sent the fronts of elaborate edifices of stone as 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices. A 
fireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, where 
one can witness the most brilliant chemical ex- 
periments, minor conflagrations only wanting the 
grandeur of cities on fire. It is a vulgar notion 
that a fire is only for heat. A chief value of it 
is, however, to look at. It is a picture, framed 
between the jambs. You have nothing on your 
walls, by the best masters (the poor masters are 
not, however, represented) that is really so fas- 
cinating, so spiritual. Speaking like an uphol- 
sterer, it furnishes the room. And it is never 
twice the same. In this respect it is like the 
landscape-view through a window, always seen 
in a new light, color, or condition. The fireplace 
is a window into the most charming world I ever 
had a glimpse of. 

Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. I 
am not scientific enough to despise it, and have 
no taste for a winter residence on Mount Wash- 
ington, where the thermometer cannot be kept 
comfortable even by boiling. They say that 
they say in Boston that there is a satisfaction 
in being well dressed which religion cannot 



10 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

give. There is certainly a satisfaction in the 
direct radiance of a hickory fire which is not to 
be found in the fieriest blasts of a furnace. 
The hot air of a furnace is a sirocco ; the heat 
of a wood fire is only intense sunshine, like that 
bottled in Lacrimse Christi. Besides this, the 
eye is delighted, the sense of smell is regaled 
by the fragrant decomposition, and the ear is 
pleased with the hissing, crackling, and singing, 
— a liberation of so many out-door noises. Some 
people like the sound of bubbling in a boiling 
pot, or the fizzing of a frying-spider. But there 
is nothing gross in the animated crackling of 
sticks of wood blazing on the hearth ; not even 
if chestnuts are roasting in the ashes. All the 
senses are ministered to, and the imagination is 
left as free as the leaping tongues of flame. 

The attention which a wood fire demands is 
one of its best recommendations. We value lit- 
tle that which costs us no trouble to maintain. 
If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going 
by private corporate action, or act of Congress, 
and to be taxed for the support of customs offi- 
cers of solar heat, we should prize it more than 



BACKLOG STUDIES. II 

we do. Not that I should like to look upon the 
sun as a job, and have the proper regulation of 
its temperature get into politics, where we al- 
ready have so much combustible stuff; but we 
take it quite too much as a matter of course, 
and, having it free, do not reckon it among the 
reasons for gratitude. Many people shut it out 
of their houses as if it were an enemy, watch 
its descent upon the carpet as if it were only a 
thief of color, and plant trees to shut it away 
from the mouldering house. All the animals 
know better than this, as well as the more sim- 
ple races of men ; the old women of the south- 
ern Italian coasts sit all day in the sun and ply 
the distaff, as grateful as the sociable hens on 
the south side of a New England barn ; the slow 
tortoise likes to take the sun upon his slop- 
ing back, soaking in color that shall make him 
immortal when the imperishable part of him is 
cut up into shell ornaments. The capacity of 
a cat to absorb sunshine is only equalled by that 
of an Arab or an Ethiopian. They are not 
afraid of injuring their complexions. White 
must be the color of civilization ; it has so , 



12 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

many natural disadvantages. But this is poli- 
tics. I was about to say that, however it may 
be with sunshine, one is always grateful for his 
wood fire, because he does not maintain it without 
some cost. 

Yet I cannot but confess to -a difference be- 
tween sunlight and the light of a wood fire. 
The sunshine is entirely untamed. Where it 
rages most freely it tends to evoke the brilliancy 
rather than the harmonious satisfactions of na- 
ture. The monstrous growths and the flaming 
colors of the tropics contrast with our more sub- 
dued loveliness of foliage and bloom. The birds 
of the middle region dazzle with their contrasts 
of plumage, and their voices are for screaming 
rather than singing. I presume the new experi- 
ments in sound would project a macaw's voice in 
very tangled and inharmonious lines of light. I 
suspect that the fiercest sunlight puts people, as 
well as animals and vegetables, on extremes in 
all ways. A wood fire on the hearth is a kindler 
of the domestic virtues. It brings in cheerful- 
ness, and a family centre, and, besides, it is 
artistic. I should like to know if an artist 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 3 

could ever represent on canvas a happy family 
gathered round a hole in the floor called a regis- 
ter. Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist 
could almost create a pleasant family round it. 
But what could he conjure out of a register? 
If there was any virtue among our ancestors, 
- — and they labored under a great many disad- 
vantages, and had few of the aids which we 
have to excellence of life, — I am convinced 
they drew it mostly from the fireside. If it was 
difficult to read the eleven commandments by 
the light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to 
get the sweet spirit of them from the counte- 
nance of the serene mother knitting in the chim- 
ney-corner. 

III. 

When the fire is made, you want to sit in 
front of it and grow genial in its effulgence. I 
have never been upon a throne, — except in 
moments of a traveller's curiosity, about as long 
as a South American dictator remains on one, 
— but I have no idea that it compares, for pleas- 
antness, with a seat before a wood fire. A whole 



14 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

leisure day before you, a good novel in hand, 
and the backlog only just beginning to kindle, 
with uncounted hours of comfort in it, — has life 
anything more delicious ? For " novel " you can 
substitute " Calvin's Institutes," if you wish to 
be virtuous as well as happy. Even Calvin 
would melt before a wood fire. A great snow- 
storm, visible on three sides of your wide-win- 
dowed room, loading the evergreens, blown in 
fine powder from the great chestnut-tops, piled 
up in ever-accumulating masses, covering the 
paths, the shrubbery, trie hedges, drifting and 
clinging in fantastic deposits, deepening your 
sense of security, and taking away the sin of 
idleness by making it a necessity, this is an ex- 
cellent background to your day by the fire. 

To deliberately sit down in the morning to 
read a novel, to enjoy yourself, is this not, in 
New England (I am told they don't read much 
in other parts of the country), the sin of sins ? 
Have you any right to read, especially novels, 
until you have exhausted the best part of the 
day in some employment that is called practi- 
cal ? Have you any right to enjoy yourself at 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



15 



all until the fag end of the day, when you are 
tired and incapable of enjoying yourself? I am 
aware that this is the practice, if not the theory, 
of our society, — to postpone the delights of 
social intercourse until after dark, and rather 
late at night, when body and mind are both 
weary with the exertions of business, and when 
we can give to what is the most delightful and 
profitable thing in life, social and intellectual 
society, only the weariness of dull brains and 
over-tired muscles. No wonder we take our 
amusements sadly, and that so many people 
find dinners heavy and parties stupid. Our 
economy leaves no place for amusements ; we 
merely add them to the burden of a life already 
full. The world is still a little off the track 
as to what is really useful. 

I confess that the morning is a very good time 
to read a novel, or anything else which is good, 
and requires a fresh mind ; and I take it that 
nothing is worth reading that does not require 
an alert mind. I suppose it is necessary that 
business should be transacted ; though the 
amount of business that does not contribute to 



1 6 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

anybody's comfort or improvement suggests the 
query whether it is not overdone. I know that 
unremitting attention to business is the price 
of success, but I don't know what success is. 
There is a man, whom we all know, who built 
a house that cost a quarter of a million of dol- 
lars, and furnished it for another like sum, who 
does not know anything * more about architec- 
ture, or painting, or books, or history, than he 
cares for the rights of those who have not so 
much money as he has. I heard him once, in 
a foreign gallery, say to his wife, as they stood 
in front of a famous picture by Rubens : " That 
is the Rape of the Sardines ! " What a cheerful 
world it would be if everybody was as successful 
as that man ! While I am reading my book by 
the fire, and taking an active part in impor- 
tant transactions that may be a good deal better 
than real, let me be thankful that a great many 
men are profitably employed in offices and bu- 
reaus and country stores in keeping up the gossip 
and endless exchange of opinions among man- 
kind, so much of which is made to appear to the 
women at home as " business." I find that there 



BACKLOG STUDIES. \J 

is a sort of busy idleness among men in this 
world that is not held in disrepute. When the 
time comes that I have to prove my right to 
vote, with women, I trust that it will be remem- 
bered in my favor that I made this admission. 
If it is true, as a witty conservative once said to 
me, that we never shall have peace in this coun- 
try until we elect a colored woman president, I 
desire to be rectus in curia early. 



IV. 

The fireplace, as we said, is a window through 
which we look out upon other scenes. We like 
to read of the small, bare room, with cobwebbed 
ceiling and narrow window, in which the poor 
child of genius sits with his magical pen, the 
master of a realm of beauty and enchantment. I 
think the open fire does not kindle the im- 
agination so much as it awakens the memory ; 
one sees the past in its crumbling embers and 
ashy grayness, rather than the future. People 
become reminiscent and even sentimental in 
front of it. They used to become something 



1 8 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

else in those good old days when it was thought 
best to heat the poker red hot before plunging it 
into the mugs of flip. This heating of the poker 
has been disapproved of late years, but I do not 
know on what grounds ; if one is to drink bitters 
and gins and the like, such as I understand as 
good people as clergymen and women take in 
private, and by advice, I do not know why one 
should not make them palatable and heat them 
with his own poker. Cold whiskey out of a 
bottle, taken as a prescription six times a day 
on the sly, is n't my idea of virtue any more than 
the social ancestral glass, sizzling wickedly with 
the hot iron. Names are so confusing in this 
world ; but things are apt to remain pretty much 
the same, whatever we call them. 

Perhaps as you look into the fireplace it widens 
and grows deep and cavernous. The back and 
the jambs are built up of great stones, not always 
smoothly laid, with jutting ledges upon which 
ashes are apt to lie. The hearthstone is an 
enormous block of trap rock, with a surface not 
perfectly even, but a capital place to crack butter- 
nuts on. Over the fire swings an iron crane, 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 19 

with a row of pot-hooks of all lengths hanging 
from it. It swings out when the housewife wants 
to hang on the tea-kettle, and it is strong enough 
to support a row of pots, or a mammoth cal- 
dron kettle on occasion. What a jolly sight is 
this fireplace when the pots and kettles in a row 
are all boiling and bubbling over the flame, and a 
roasting-spit is turning in front ! It makes a per- 
son as hungry as one of Scott's novels. But the 
brilliant sight is in the frosty morning, about 
daylight, when the fire is made. The coals are 
raked open, the split sticks are piled up in open- 
work criss-crossing, as high as the crane ; and 
when the flame catches hold and roars up through 
the interstices, it is like an out-of-door bonfire. 
Wood enough is consumed in that morning sac- 
rifice to cook the food of a Parisian family for a 
year. How it roars up the wide chimney, send- 
ing into the air the signal smoke and sparks 
which announce to the farming neighbors an- 
other day cheerfully begun ! The sleepiest boy 
in the world would get up in his red flannel 
nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he 
dropped to sleep again in his chair before the 



20 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

ruddy blaze. Then it is that the house, which 
has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching 
cold of winter, begins to glow again and come to 
life. The thick frost melts little by little on the 
small window-panes, and it is seen that the gray 
dawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow. 
It is time to blow out the candle, which has lost 
all its cheerfulness in the light of day. The 
morning romance is over ; the family is astir ; 
and member after member appears with the 
morning yawn, to stand before the crackling, 
fierce conflagration. The daily round begins. 
The most hateful employment ever invented for 
mortal man presents itself: the " chores" are to 
be done. The boy who expects every morning 
to open into a new world finds that to-day is like 
yesterday, but he believes to-morrow will be 
different. And yet enough for him, for the day, 
is the wading in the snow-drifts, or the sliding on 
the diamond-sparkling crust. Happy, too, is he, 
when the storm rages, and the snow is piled high 
against the windows, if he can sit in the warm 
chimney-corner and read about Burgoyne, and 
General Fraser, and Miss McCrea, midwinter 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 21 

marches through the wilderness, surprises of wig- 
wams, and the stirring ballad, say, of the Battle 
of the Kegs : — 

" Come, gallants, attend and list a friend 
Thrill forth harmonious ditty ; 
While I shall tell what late befell 
At Philadelphia city." 

I should like to know what heroism a boy in 
an old New England farm-house — rough-nursed 
by nature, and fed on the traditions of the old 
wars — did not aspire to. " John," says the 
mother, "you '11 burn your head to a crisp in 
that heat." But John does not hear; he is 
storming the Plains of Abraham just now. 
"Johnny, dear, bring in a stick of wood." 
How can Johnny bring in wood when he is 
in that defile with Braddock, and the Indians 
are popping at him from behind every tree ? 
There is something about a boy that I like, 
after all. 

The fire rests upon the broad hearth ; the 
hearth rests upon a great substruction of stone, 
and the substruction rests upon the cellar. 
What supports the cellar I never knew, but 



22 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

the cellar supports the family. The cellar is 
the foundation of domestic comfort. Into its 
dark, cavernous recesses the child's imagina- 
tion fearfully goes. Bogies guard the bins of 
choicest apples. I know not what comical sprites 
sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the 
walls. The feeble flicker of the tallow-candle 
does not at all dispel, but creates, illusions, 
and magnifies all the rich possibilities of this 
underground treasure-house. When the cellar- 
door is opened, and the boy begins to descend 
into the thick darkness, it is always with a heart- 
beat as of one started upon some adventure. 
Who can forget the smell that comes through the 
opened door ; — a mingling of fresh earth, fruit 
exhaling delicious aroma, kitchen vegetables, the 
mouldy odor of barrels, a sort of ancestral air, — 
as if a door had been opened into an old romance. 
Do you like it ? Not much. But then I would 
not exchange the remembrance of it for a good 
many odors and perfumes that I do like. 

It is time to punch the backlog and put on a 
new forestick. 




>HE log was white birch. The beau- 
tiful satin bark at once kindled into 
a soft, pure, but brilliant flame, some- 
thing like that of naphtha. There is no other 
wood flame so rich, and it leaps up in a joy- 
ous, spiritual way, as if glad to burn for the 
sake of burning. Burning like a clear oil, it has 
none of the heaviness and fatness of the pine 
and the balsam. Woodsmen are at a loss to 
account for its intense and yet chaste flame, 
since the bark has no oily appearance. The 
heat from it is fierce, and the light dazzling. It 
flares up eagerly like young love, and then dies 
away ; the wood does not keep up the promise 
of the bark. The woodsmen, it is proper to say, 



24 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

have not considered it in its relation to young 
love. In the remote settlements the pine-knot is 
still the torch of courtship ; it endures to sit up 
by. The birch-bark has alliances with the world 
of sentiment and of letters. The most poetical 
reputation of the North American Indian floats 
in a canoe made of it ; his picture-writing was 
inscribed on it. It is the paper that nature fur- 
nishes for lovers in the wilderness, who are 
enabled to convey a delicate sentiment by its 
use, which is expressed neither in their ideas nor 
chirography. It is inadequate for legal parch- 
ment, but does very well for deeds of love, which 
are not meant usually to give a perfect title. 
With care, it may be split into sheets as thin 
as the Chinese paper. It is so beautiful to han- 
dle that it is a pity civilization cannot make 
more use of it. But fancy articles manufac- 
tured from it are very much like all ornamental 
work made of nature's perishable seeds, leaves, 
cones, and dry twigs, — exquisite while the pret- 
ty fingers are fashioning it, but soon growing 
shabby and cheap to the eye. And yet there is 
a pathos in " dried things," whether they are dis- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 2$ 

played as ornaments in some secluded home, or 
hidden religiously in bureau-drawers where pro> 
fane eyes cannot see how white ties are growing 
yellow and ink is fading from treasured letters, 
amid a faint and discouraging perfume of ancient 
rose-leaves. 

The birch log holds out very well while it is 
green, but has not substance enough for a back- 
log when dry. Seasoning green timber or men 
is always an experiment. A man may do very 
well in a simple, let us say, country or back- 
woods line of life, who would come to nothing in 
a more complicated civilization. City life is a 
severe trial. One man is struck with a dry-rot ; 
another develops season-cracks ; another shrinks 
and swells with every change of circumstance. 
Prosperity is said to be more trying than adver- 
sity, a theory which most people are willing to ac- 
cept without trial ; but few men stand the dry- 
ing out of the natural sap of their greenness in 
the artificial heat of city life. This, be it noticed, 
is nothing against the drying and seasoning 
process ; character must be put into the crucible 
some time, and why not in this world ? A man 



26 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

who cannot stand seasoning will not have a high 
market value in any part of the universe. It is 
creditable to the race, that so many men and wo 
men bravely jump into the furnace of prosperity 
and expose themselves to the drying influences 
of city life. 

The first fire that is lighted on the hearth in 
the autumn seems to bring out the cold weather. 
Deceived by the placid appearance of the dying 
year, the softness of the sky, and the warm color 
of foliage, we have been shivering about for days 
without exactly comprehending what was the 
matter. The open fire at once sets up a stand- 
ard of comparison. We find that the advance 
guards of winter are besieging the house. The 
cold rushes in at every crack of door and win- 
dow, apparently signalled by the flame to invade 
the house and fill it with chilly drafts and sar- 
casms on what we call the temperate zone. It 
needs a roaring fire to beat back the enemy ; a 
feeble one is only an invitation to the most 
insulting demonstrations. Our pious New Eng- 
land ancestors were philosophers in their way. 
It was not simply owing to grace that they sat 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 2*] 

for hours in their barn-like meeting-houses dur- 
ing the winter Sundays, the thermometer many 
degrees below freezing, with no fire, except the 
zeal in their own hearts, — a congregation of red 
noses and bright eyes. It was no wonder that 
the minister in the pulpit warmed up to his sub- 
ject, cried aloud, used hot words, spoke a good 
deal of the hot place and the Person whose pres- 
ence was a burning shame, hammered the desk 
as if he expected to drive his text through a two- 
inch plank, and heated himself by all allowable 
ecclesiastical gymnastics. A few of their follow- 
ers in our day seem to forget that our modern 
churches are heated by furnaces and supplied 
with gas. In the old days it would have been 
thought unphilosophic as well as effeminate to 
warm the meeting-houses artificially. In one 
house I knew, at least, when it was proposed to 
introduce a stove to take a little of the chill 
from the Sunday services, the deacons protested 
against the innovation. They said that the stove 
might benefit those who sat close to it, but it 
would drive all the cold air to the other parts 
of the church, and freeze the people to death ; it 



28 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

was cold enough now around the edges. Blessed 
days of ignorance and upright living ! Sturdy 
men who served God by resolutely sitting out 
the icy hours of service, amid the rattling of 
windows and the carousal of winter in the high, 
wind-swept galleries ! Patient women, waiting 
in the chilly house for consumption to pick out 
his victims, and replace the color of youth and 
the flush of devotion with the hectic of disease ! 
At least, you did not doze and droop in our over- 
heated edifices, and die of vitiated air and dis- 
regard of the simplest conditions of organized 
life. It is fortunate that each generation does 
not comprehend its own ignorance. We are 
thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous. 
It is something also that each age has its choice 
of the death it will die. Our generation is most 
ingenious. From our public assembly-rooms 
and houses we have almost succeeded in ex- 
cluding pure air. It took the race ages to build 
dwellings that would keep out rain ; it has taken 
longer to build houses air-tight, but we are on 
the eve of success. We are only foiled by the 
ill-fitting, insincere work of the builders, who 
build for a day, and charge for all time. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 29 



II. 

When the fire on the hearth has blazed up 
and then settled into steady radiance, talk be- 
gins. There is no place like the chimney-corner 
for confidences ; for picking up the clews of an 
old friendship ; for taking note where one 's self 
has drifted, by comparing ideas and prejudices 
with the intimate friend of years ago, whose 
course in life has lain apart from yours. No 
stranger puzzles you so much as the once close 
friend, with whose thinking and associates you 
have for years been unfamiliar. Life has come 
to mean this and that to you ; you have fallen 
into certain habits of thought ; for you the world 
has progressed in this or that direction ; of certain 
results you feel very sure ; you have fallen into 
harmony with your surroundings ; you meet day 
after day people interested in the things that 
interest you ; you are not in the least opinion- 
ated, it is simply your good fortune to look upon 
the affairs of the world from the right point of 
view. When you last saw your friend, — less 



30 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

than a year after you left college, — he was the 
most sensible and agreeable of men ; he had no 
heterodox notions ; he agreed with you ; you 
could even tell what sort of a wife he would 
select, and if you could do that, you held the key 
to his life. 

Well, Herbert came to visit me the other day 
from the antipodes. And here he sits by the 
fireplace. I cannot think of any one I would 
rather see there, — except perhaps Thackeray ; 
or, for entertainment, Boswell ; or old Pepys ; or 
one of the people who was left out of the Ark. 
They were talking one foggy London night at 
Hazlitt's about whom they would most like to 
have seen, when Charles Lamb startled the com- 
pany by declaring that he would rather have 
seen Judas Iscariot than any other person who 
had lived on the earth. For myself, I would 
rather have seen Lamb himself once, than to 
have lived with Judas. Herbert, to my great 
delight, has not changed ; I should know him 
anywhere, — the same serious, contemplative 
face, with lurking humor at the corners of the 
mouth, — the same cheery laugh and clear, dis- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



31 



tinct enunciation as of old. There is nothing 
so winning as a good voice. To see Herbert 
again, unchanged in all outward* essentials, is 
not only gratifying, but valuable as a testimony 
to nature's success in holding on to a personal 
identity, through the entire change of matter 
that had been constantly taking place for so 
many years. I know very well there is here 
no part of the Herbert whose hand I had shaken 
at the Commencement parting ; but it is an 
astonishing reproduction of him, — a material 
likeness ; and now for the spiritual. 

Such a wide chance for divergence in the 
spiritual. It has been such a busy world for 
twenty years. So many things have been torn 
up by the roots again that were settled when 
we left college. There were to be no more 
wars ; democracy was democracy, and progress, 
the differentiation of the individual, was a mere 
question of clothes ; if you want to be different, 
go to your tailor ; nobody had demonstrated that 
there is a man-soul and a woman-soul, and that 
each is in reality only a half-soul, — putting the 
race, so to speak, upon the half-shell. The social 



32 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

oyster being opened, there appears to be two 
shells and only one oyster ; who shall have it ? 
So many new canons of taste, of criticism, of 
morality have been set up ; there has been such 
a resurrection of historical reputations for new 
judgment, and there have been so many discov- 
eries, geographical, archaeological, geological, bio- 
logical, that the earth is not at all what it was 
supposed to be ; and our philosophers are much 
more anxious to ascertain where we came from 
than whither we are going. In this whirl and 
turmoil of new ideas, nature, which has only the 
single end of maintaining the physical identity 
in the body, works on undisturbed, replacing 
particle ior particle, and preserving the likeness 
more skilfully than a mosaic artist in the Vati- 
can ; she has not even her materials sorted and 
labelled, as the Roman artist has his thousands 
of bits of color ; and man is all the while doing 
his best to confuse the process, by changing his 
climate, his diet, all his surroundings, without 
the least care to remain himself. But the mind ? 
It is more difficult to get acquainted with 
Herbert than with an entire stranger, for I have 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 33 

my prepossessions about him, and do not find 
him in so many places where I expect to find 
him. He is full of criticism of the authors I 
admire ; he thinks stupid or improper the books 
I most read ; he is sceptical about the " move- 
ments " I am interested in ; he has formed very 
different opinions from mine concerning a hun- 
dred men and women of the present day ; we 
used to eat from one dish ; we could n't now 
find anything in common in a dozen ; his pre- 
judices (as we call our opinions) are most ex- 
traordinary, and not half so reasonable as my 
prejudices ; there are a great many persons and 
things that I am accustomed to denounce, un- 
contradicted by anybody, which he defends ; his 
public opinion is not at all my public opinion. I 
am sorry for him. He appears to have fallen into 
influences and among a set of people foreign to me. 
I find that his church has a different steeple on 
it from my church (which, to say the truth, 
has n't any). It is a pity that such a dear friend 
and a man of so much promise should have 
drifted off into such general contrariness. I see 
Herbert sitting here by the fire, with the old 



34 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

look in his face coming out more and more, but 
I do not recognize any features of his mind, — : 
except perhaps his contrariness ; yes, he was 
always a little contrary, I think. And finally 
he surprised me with, "Well, my friend, you 
seem to have drifted away from your old no- 
tions and opinions. We used to agree when 
we were together, but I sometimes wondered 
where you would land ; for, pardon me, you 
showed signs of looking at things a little con- 
trary." 

I am silent for a good while. I am trying to 
think who I am. There was a person whom I 
thought I knew, very fond of Herbert, and agree- 
ing with him in most things. Where has he 
gone ? and, if he is here, where is the Herbert 
that I knew ? 

If his intellectual and moral sympathies have 
all changed, I wonder if his physical tastes re- 
main, like his appearance, the same. There has 
come over this country within the last genera- 
tion, as everybody knows, a great wave of con- 
demnation of pie. It has taken the character of 
a " movement," though we have had no conven* 






BACKLOG STUDIES. 35 

tions about it, nor is any one, of any of the 
several sexes among us, running for president 
against it. It is safe almost anywhere to de- 
nounce pie, yet nearly everybody eats it on occa- 
sion. A great many people think it savors of a 
life abroad to speak with horror of pie, although 
they were very likely the foremost of the Ameri- 
cans in Paris who used to speak with more en- 
thusiasm of the American pie at Madame Busque's 
than of the Venus of Milo. To talk against pie 
and still eat it is snobbish, of course ; but snob- 
bery, being an aspiring failing, is sometimes the 
prophecy of better things. To affect dislike of 
pie is something. We have no statistics on the 
subject, and cannot tell whether it is gaining or 
losing in the country at large. Its disappearance 
in select circles is no test. The amount of writ- 
ing against it is no more test of its desuetude, 
than the number of religious tracts distributed in 
a given district is a criterion of its piety. We 
are apt to assume that certain regions are sub- 
stantially free of it. Herbert and I, travelling 
north one summer, fancied that we could draw in 
New England a sort of diet line, like the sweep- 



36 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

ing curves on the isothermal charts, which should 
show at least the leading pie sections. Journey- 
ing towards the White Mountains, we concluded 
that a line passing through Bellows Falls, and 
bending a little south on either side, would mark 
northward the region of perpetual pie. In this 
region pie is to be found at all hours and seasons, 
and at every meal. I am not sure, however, that 
pie is not a matter of altitude rather than lati- 
tude, as I find that all the hill and country towns 
of New England are full of those excellent wo- 
men, the very salt of the housekeeping earth, 
who would feel ready to sink in mortification 
through their scoured kitchen floors, if visitors 
should catch them without a pie in the house. 
The absence of pie would be more noticed than 
a scarcity of Bible even. Without it the house- 
keepers are as distracted as the boarding-house 
keeper, who declared that if it were not for 
canned tomato she should have nothing to fly to. 
Well, in all this great agitation I find Herbert 
unmoved, a conservative, even to the under-crust. 
I dare not ask him if he eats pie at breakfast. 
There are some tests that the dearest friendship 
may not apply. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 37 

" Will you smoke ? " I ask. 

" No, I have reformed." 

" Yes, of course." 

" The fact is, that when we consider the corre- 
lation of forces, the apparent sympathy of spirit 
manifestations with electric conditions, the al- 
most revealed mysteries of what may be called 
the odic force, and the relation of all these phe- 
nomena to the nervous system in man, it is not 
safe to do anything to the nervous system that 
will — " 

" Hang the nervous system ! Herbert, we can 
agree in one thing : old memories, reveries, friend- 
ships, centre about that : — is n't an open wood 
fire good ? " 

" Yes," says Herbert, combatively, " if you 
don't sit before it too long." 



III. 

The best talk is that which escapes up the 
open chimney and cannot be repeated. The 
finest woods make the best fire and pass away 
with the least residuum. I hope the next gener- 



38 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

ation will not accept the reports of " interviews " 
as specimens of the conversations of these years 
of grace. 

But do we talk as well as our fathers and 
mothers did ? We hear wonderful stories of 
the bright generation that sat about the wide 
fireplaces of New England. Good talk has so 
much short-hand that it cannot be reported, — 
the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug, can- 
not be caught on paper. The best of it is when 
the subject unexpectedly goes cross-lots, by a 
flash of short-cut, to a conclusion so suddenly 
revealed that it has the effect of wit. It needs 
the highest culture and the finest breeding to 
prevent the conversation from running into mere 
persiflage on the one hand — its common fate — 
or monologue on the other. Our conversation is 
largely chaff. I am not sure but the former gen- 
eration preached a good deal, but it had great 
practice in fireside talk, and must have talked 
well. There were narrators in those days who 
could charm a circle all the evening long with 
stories. When each day brought comparatively 
little new to read, there was leisure for talk, and 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



39 



the rare book and the infrequent magazine were 
thoroughly discussed. Families now are swamped 
by the printed matter that comes daily upon the 
centre-table. There must be a division of labor, 
one reading this, and another that, to make any 
impression on it. The telegraph brings the only 
common food, and works this daily miracle, that 
every mind in Christendom is excited by one 
topic simultaneously with every other mind ; it 
enables a concurrent mental action, a burst of 
sympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, 
which must be, if we have any faith in the imma- 
terial left, one of the chief forces in modern life. 
It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity 
should be the minister of it. 

When there is so much to read, there is little 
time for conversation ; nor is there leisure for 
another pastime of the ancient firesides, called 
reading aloud. The listeners, who heard while 
they looked into the wide chimney-place, saw 
there pass in stately procession the events and 
the grand persons of history, were kindled with 
the delights of travel, touched by the romance of 
rue love, or made restless by tales of adventure ; 



40 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

— the hearth became a sort of magic stone that 
could transport those who sat by it to the most 
distant places and times, as soon as the book was 
opened and the reader began, of a winter's night. 
Perhaps the Puritan reader read through his 
nose, and all the little Puritans made the most 
dreadful nasal inquiries as the entertainment 
went on. The prominent nose of the intellect- 
ual New-Englander is evidence of the constant 
linguistic exercise of the organ for generations. 
It grew by talking through. But I have no 
doubt that practice made good readers in those 
days. Good reading aloud is almost a lost accom- 
plishment now. It is little thought of in the 
schools. It is disused at home. It is rare to find 
any one who can read, even from the newspaper, 
well. Reading is so universal, even with the 
uncultivated, that it is common to hear people 
mispronounce words that you did not suppose 
they had ever seen. In reading to themselves 
they glide over these words, in reading aloud 
they stumble over them. Besides, our every- 
day books and newspapers are so larded with 
French that the ordinary reader is obliged mar- 
cher a pas de loup, — for instance. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 41 

The newspaper is probably responsible for 
making current many words with which the 
general reader is familiar, but which he rises 
to in the flow of conversation, and strikes at 
with a splash and an unsuccessful attempt at 
appropriation ; the word, which he perfectly 
knows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot 
master it. The newspaper is thus widening 
the language in use, and vastly increasing the 
number of words which enter into common 
talk. The Americans of the lowest intellect- 
ual class probably use more words to express 
their ideas than the similar class of any other 
people ; but this prodigality is partially bal^ 
anced by the parsimony of words in some 
higher regions, in which a few phrases of cur- 
rent slang are made to do the whole duty of 
exchange of ideas ; if that can be called exchange 
of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to an- 
other the remark, concerning some report, that 
"you know how it is yourself," and is met by 
the response of "that 's what's the matter," and 
rejoins with the perfectly conclusive "that 's so." 
It requires a high degree of culture to use slang 



42 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

with elegance and effect ; and we are yet very far 
from the Greek attainment. 



IV. 

The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind 
rising, the night heavy and black above, but 
light with sifting snow on the earth, — a back- 
ground of inclemency for the illumined room 
with its pictured walls, tables heaped with books, 
capacious easy-chairs and their occupants, — it 
needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far 
through the crystal of the broad windows, in 
order that we may rightly appreciate the relation 
of the wide-jambed chimney to domestic architect- 
ure in our climate. We fell to talking about it ; 
and, as is usual when the conversation is profess- 
edly on one subject, we wandered all around it. 
The young lady staying with us was roasting 
chestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explo- 
sions required considerable attention. The mis- 
tress, too, sat somewhat alert, ready to rise at any 
instant and minister to the fancied want of this 
or that guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



43 



people about a fireside will not have any wants 
if they are not suggested. The worst of them, 
if they desire anything, only want something hot, 
and that later in the evening. And it is an open 
question whether you ought to associate with 
people who want that. 

I was saying that nothing had been so slow in 
its progress in the world as domestic architecture. 
Temples, palaces, bridges, aqueducts, cathedrals, 
towers of marvellous delicacy and strength, grew to 
perfection while the common people lived in hovels, 
and the richest lodged in the most gloomy and con- 
tracted quarters. The dwelling-house is a modern 
institution. It is a curious fact that it has only 
improved with the social elevation of women. 
Men were never more brilliant in arms and letters 
than in the age of Elizabeth, and yet they had no 
homes. They made themselves thick-walled cas- 
tles, with slits in the masonry for windows, for 
defence, and magnificent banquet-halls for pleas- 
ure ; the stone rooms into which they crawled 
for the night were often little better than dog- 
kennels. The Pompeians had no comfortable 
night-quarters. The most singular thing to me, 



44 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

however, is that, especially interested as woman 
is in the house, she has never done anything for 
architecture. And yet woman is reputed to be 
an ingenious creature. 

Herbert. I doubt if woman has real inge- 
nuity ; she has great adaptability. I don't say 
that she will do the same thing twice alike, like a 
Chinaman, but she is most cunning in suiting 
herself to circumstances. 

The Fire-Tender. O, if you speak of con- 
structive, creative ingenuity, perhaps not ; but 
in the higher ranges of achievement — that of 
accomplishing any purpose dear to her heart, 
for instance — her ingenuity is simply incompre- 
hensible to me. 

Herbert. Yes, if you mean doing things by 
indirection. 

The Mistress. When you men assume all 
the direction, what else is left to us ? 

The Fire-Tender. Did you ever see a wo- 
man refurnish a house ? 

The Young Lady Staying With Us. I never 
saw a man do it, unless he was burned out of his 
rookery. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 45 

Herbert. There is no comfort in new things. 

The Fire-Tender (not noticing the inter- 
ruption). Having set her mind on a total revo- 
lution of the house, she buys one new thing, not 
too obtrusive, nor much out of harmony with the 
old. The husband scarcely notices it, least of all 
does he suspect the revolution, which she already 
has accomplished. Next, some article that does 
look a little shabby beside the new piece of 
furniture is sent to the garret, and its place is 
supplied by something that will match in color 
and effect. Even the man can see that it ought 
to match, and so the process goes on, it may be 
for years, it may be forever, until nothing of the 
old is left, and the house is transformed as it was 
predetermined in the woman's mind. I doubt if 
the man ever understands how or when it was 
done ; his wife certainly never says anything 
about the refurnishing, but quietly goes on to 
new conquests. 

The Mistress. And isn't it better to buy 
little by little, enjoying every new object as you 
get it, and assimilating each article to your 
household life, and making the home a har- 



46 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

monious expression of your own taste, rather 
than to order things in sets, and turn your 
house, for the time being, into a furniture ware- 
room ? 

The Fire-Tender. O, I only spoke of the 
ingenuity of it. 

The Young Lady. For my part, I never can 
get acquainted with more than one piece of fur- 
niture at a time. 

Herbert. I suppose women are our superiors 
in artistic taste, and I fancy that I can tell 
whether a house is furnished by a woman or a 
man ; of course, I mean the few houses that ap- 
pear to be the result of individual taste and refine- 
ment, — most of them look as if they had been 
furnished on contract by the upholsterer. 

The Mistress. Woman's province in this 
world is putting things to rights. 

Herbert. With a vengeance, sometimes. In 
the study, for example. My chief objection to 
woman is that she has no respect for the news- 
paper, or the printed page, as such. She is Siva, 
the destroyer. I have noticed that a great part 
of a married man's time at home is spent in try- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 47 

ing to find the things he has put on his study- 
table. 

The Young Lady. Herbert speaks with the 
bitterness of a bachelor shut out of paradise. It 
is my experience that if women did not destroy 
the rubbish that men bring into the house, it 
would become uninhabitable, and need to be 
burned down every five years. 

The Fire-Tender. I confess women do a 
great deal for the appearance of things. When 
the mistress is absent, this room, although every- 
thing is here as it was before, does not look at all 
like the same place ; it is stiff, and seems to lack 
a soul. When she returns, I can see that her 
eye, even while greeting me, takes in the situa- 
tion at a glance. While she is talking of the 
journey, and before she has removed her travelling- 
hat, she turns this chair and moves that, sets one 
piece of furniture at a different angle, rapidly, 
and apparently unconsciously, shifts a dozen 
little knick-knacks and bits of color, and the room 
is transformed. I could n't do it in a week. 

The Mistress. That is the first time I ever 
knew a man admit he could n't do anything if he 
had time. 



48 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Herbert. Yet with all her peculiar instinct 
for making a home, women make themselves 
very little felt in our domestic architecture. 

The Mistress. Men build most of the houses 
in what might be called the ready-made-clothing 
style, and we have to do the best we can with 
them ; and hard enough it is to make cheerful 
homes in most of them. You will see something 
different when the woman is constantly consulted 
in the plan of the house. 

Herbert. We might see more difference if 
women would give any attention to architecture. 
Why are there no women architects ? 

The Fire-Tender. Want of the ballot, doubt- 
less. It seems to me that here is a splendid 
opportunity for woman to come to the front. 

The Young Lady. They have no desire to 
come to the front ; they would rather manage 
things where they are. 

The Fire-Tender. If they would master the 
noble art, and put their brooding taste upon it, 
we might very likely compass something in our 
domestic architecture that we have not yet at- 
tained. The outside of our houses needs atten- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 49 

tion as well as the inside. Most of them are as 
ugly as money can build. 

The Young Lady. What vexes me most is, 
that women, married women, have so easily con- 
sented to give up open fires in their houses. 

Herbert. They dislike the dust and the 
bother. I think that women rather like the 
confined furnace heat. 

The Fire-Tender. Nonsense ; it is their an- 
gelic virtue of submission. We would n't be hired 
to stay all day in the houses we build. 

The Young Lady. That has a very chival- 
rous sound, but I know there will be no reforma- 
tion until women rebel and demand everywhere 
the open fire. 

Herbert. They are just now rebelling about 
something else ; it seems to me yours is a sort 
of counter-movement, a fire in the rear. 

The Mistress. I '11 join that movement. The 
time has come when woman must strike for her 
altars and her fires. 

Herbert. Hear, hear! 

The Mistress. Thank you, Herbert. I ap- 
plauded you once, when you declaimed that 



50 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

years ago in the old Academy. I remember 
how eloquently you did it. 

Herbert. Yes, I was once a spouting idiot. 

Just then the door-bell rang, and company 
came in. And the company brought in a new 
atmosphere, as company always does, — some- 
thing of the disturbance of out-doors, and a good 
deal of its healthy cheer. The direct news that 
the thermometer was approaching zero, with a 
hopeful prospect of going below it, increased to 
liveliness our satisfaction in the fire. When the 
cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher, 
there was difference of opinion whether there 
should be toast in it ; some were for toast, 
because that was the old-fashioned way, and 
others were against it, "because it does not taste 
good" in cider. Herbert said there was very 
little respect left for our forefathers. 

More wood was put on, and the flame danced 
in a hundred fantastic shapes. The snow had 
ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay in silvery 
patches among the trees in the ravine. The con' 
versation became worldly. 







'ERBERT said, as we sat by the fire 
one night, that he wished he had 
sg turned his attention to writing poe- 
-"*' try like Tennyson's. 
The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. 
Tennyson is a man of talent, who happened to 
strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with 
cleverness. The adventurer with a pick-axe in 
Washoe may happen upon like good fortune. 
The world is full of poetry as the earth is of 
"pay-dirt"; one only needs to know how to 
" strike " it. An able man can make himself 
almost anything that he will. It is melancholy 
to think how many epic poets have been lost 
in the tea-trade, how many dramatists (though 



52 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

the age of the drama has passed), have wasted 
their genius in great mercantile and mechanical 
enterprises. I know a man who might have 
been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of 
this country, who chose to become a county 
judge, to sit day after day upon a bench in an 
obscure corner of the world, listening to wrang- 
ling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, prefer- 
ring to judge his fellow-men rather than enlighten 
them. 

It is fortunate for the vanity of the living and 
the reputation of the dead, that men get almost 
as much credit for what they do not as for what 
they do. It was the opinion of many that Burns 
might have excelled as a statesman, or have been 
a great captain in war; and Mr. Carlyle says 
that if he had been sent to a university, and 
become a trained intellectual workman, it lay in 
him to have changed the whole course of British 
literature ! A large undertaking, as so vigorous 
and dazzling a writer as Mr. Carlyle must know 
by this time, since British literature has swept 
by him in a resistless and widening flood, mainly 
uncontaminated, and leaving his grotesque con* 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 53 

trivances wrecked on the shore with other curios- 
ities of letters, and yet among the richest of all 
the treasures lying there. 

It is a temptation to a temperate man to 
become a sot, to hear what talent, what versa- 
tility, what genius, is almost always attributed to 
a moderately bright man who is habitually drunk. 
Such a mechanic, such a mathematician, such a 
poet he would be if he were only sober ; and then 
he is sure to be the most generous, magnani- 
mous, friendly soul, conscientiously honorable, if 
he were not so conscientiously drunk. I sup- 
pose it is now notorious that the most brilliant 
and promising men have been lost to the world 
in this way. It is sometimes almost painful to 
think what a surplus of talent and genius there 
would be in the world if the habit of intoxication 
should suddenly cease ; and what a slim chance 
there would be for the plodding people who have 
always had tolerably good habits. The fear is 
only mitigated by the observation that the repu- 
tation of a person for great talent sometimes 
ceases with his reformation. 

It is believed by some that the maidens who 



54 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

would make the best wives never marry, but 
remain free to bless the world with their im- 
partial sweetness, and make it generally habit- 
able. This is one of the mysteries of Providence 
and New England life. It seems a pity, at first 
sight, that all those who become poor wives have 
the matrimonial chance, and that they are de- 
prived of the reputation of those who would be 
good wives were they not set apart for the high 
and perpetual office of priestesses of society. 
There is no beauty like that which was spoiled 
by an accident, no accomplishments and graces 
are so to be envied as those that circumstances 
rudely hindered the development of. All of 
which shows what a charitable and good-tem- 
pered world it is, notwithstanding its reputa- 
tion for cynicism and detraction. 

Nothing is more beautiful than the belief of 
the faithful wife that her husband has all the 
talents, and could, if he would, be distinguished 
in any walk in life ; and nothing will be more 
beautiful — unless this is a very dry time for 
signs — than the husband's belief that his wife 
is capable of taking charge of any of the affairs 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 55 

of this confused planet. There is no woman but 
thinks that her husband, the green-grocer, could 
write poetry if he had given his mind to it, or 
else she thinks small beer of poetry in com- 
parison with an occupation or accomplishment 
purely vegetable. It is touching to see the look 
of pride with which the wife turns to her husband 
from any more brilliant personal presence or dis- 
play of wit than his, in the perfect confidence 
that if the world knew what she knows there 
would be one more popular idol. How she mag- 
nifies his small wit, and dotes upon the self-satis- 
fied look in his face as if it were a sign of wis- 
dom ! What a councillor that man would make ! 
What a warrior he would be ! There are a great 
many corporals in their retired homes who did 
more for the safety and success of our armies 
in critical moments, in the late war, than any 
of the " high-cock-a-lorum " commanders. Mrs. 
Corporal does not envy the reputation of General 
Sheridan ; she knows very well who really won 
Five Forks, for she has heard the story a hun- 
dred times, and will hear it a hundred times 
more with apparently unabated interest. What 



56 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

a general her husband would have made ; and 
how his talking talent would shine in Congress ! 

Herbert. Nonsense. There is n't a wife in 
the world who has not taken the exact measure of 
her husband, weighed him and settled him in her 
own mind, and knows him as well as if she had 
ordered him after designs and specifications of 
her own. That knowledge, however, she ordina- 
rily keeps to herself, and she enters into a league 
with her husband, which he was never admitted 
to the secret of, to impose upon the world. In 
nine out of ten cases he more than half believes 
that he is what his wife tells him he is. At any 
rate she manages him as easily as the keeper does 
the elephant, with only a bamboo wand and a 
sharp spike in the end. Usually she flatters him, 
but she has the means of pricking clear through 
his hide on occasion. It is the great secret of 
her power to have him think that she thoroughly 
believes in him. 

The Young Lady Staying With Us. And 
you call this hypocrisy ? I have heard authors, 
who thought themselves sly observers of women, 
call it so. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 57 

Herbert. Nothing of the sort. It is the basis 
on which society rests, the conventional agree- 
ment. If society is about to be overturned, it is 
on this point. Women are beginning to tell men 
what they really think of them ; and to insist 
that the same relations of downright sincerity 
and independence that exist between men shall 
exist between women and men. Absolute truth 
between souls, without regard to sex, has always 
been the ideal life of the poets. 

The Mistress. Yes ; but there was never a 
poet yet who would bear to have his wife say 
exactly what she thought of his poetry, any more 
than he would keep his temper if his wife beat 
him at chess ; and there is nothing that disgusts 
a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman. 

Herbert. Well, women know how to win by 
losing. I think that the reason why most women 
do not want to take the ballot and stand out in 
the open for a free trial of power, is that they are 
reluctant to change the certain domination of 
centuries, with weapons they are perfectly com- 
petent to handle, for an experiment. I think we 
should be better off if women were more trans- 



58 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

parent, and men were not so systematically puffed 
up by the subtle flattery which is used to control 
them. 

Mandeville. Deliver me from transparency. 
When a woman takes that guise, and. begins to 
convince me that I can see through her like a ray 
of light, I must run or be lost. Transparent wo- 
men are the truly dangerous. There was one on 
ship-board [Mandeville likes to say that; he has 
just returned from a little tour in Europe, and he 
quite often begins his remarks with " on the ship 
going over " ; the Young Lady declares that he 
has a sort of roll in his chair, when he says it, 
that makes her sea-sick] who was the most inno- 
cent, artless, guileless, natural bunch of lace and 
feathers you ever saw ; she was all candor and 
helplessness and dependence ; she sang like a 
nightingale, and talked like a nun. There never 
was such simplicity. There was n't a sounding- 
line on board that would have gone to the 
bottom of her soulful eyes. But she managed the 
captain and all the officers, and controlled the 
ship as if she had been the helm. All the pas- 
sengers were waiting on her, fetching this and 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 59 

that for her comfort, inquiring of her health, talk- 
ing about her genuineness, and exhibiting as 
much anxiety to get her ashore in safety, as if 
she had been about to knight them all and give 
them a castle apiece when they came to land. 

The Mistress. What harm ? It shows what 
I have always said, that the service of a noble 
woman is the most ennobling influence for men. 

Mandeville. If she is noble, and not a mere 
manager. I watched this woman to see if she 
would ever do anything for any one else. She 
never did. 

The Fire-Tender. Did you ever see her 
again? I presume Mandeville has introduced 
her here for some purpose. 

Mandeville. No purpose. But we did see 
her on the Rhine ; she was the most disgusted 
traveller, and seemed to be in very ill humor with 
her maid. I judged that her happiness depended 
upon establishing controlling relations with all 
about her. On this Rhine boat, to be sure, there 
was reason for disgust. And that reminds me of 
a remark that was made. 

The Young Lady. Oh! 



60 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Mandeville. When we got aboard at May- 
ence we were conscious of a dreadful odor some- 
where ; as it was a foggy morning, we could see 
no cause of it, but concluded it was from some- 
thing on the wharf. The fog lifted, and we got 
under way, but the odor travelled with us, and 
increased. We went to every part of the vessel 
to avoid it, but in vain. It occasionally reached 
us in great waves of disagreeableness. We had 
heard of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, 
but we had no idea that the entire stream was 
infected. It was intolerable. 

The day was lovely, and the passengers stood 
about on deck holding their noses and admir- 
ing the scenery. You might see a row of them 
leaning over the side, gazing up at some old 
ruin or ivied crag, entranced with the romance 
of the situation, and all holding their noses with 
thumb and finger. The sweet Rhine ! By and 
by somebody discovered that the odor came from 
a pile of cheese on the forward deck, covered 
with a canvas ; it seemed that the Rhinelanders 
are so fond of it that they take it with them 
when they travel. If there should ever be war 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 6 1 

between us and Germany, the borders of the 
Rhine would need no other defence from Ameri- 
can soldiers than a barricade of this cheese. I 
went to the stern of the steamboat to tell a stout 
American traveller what was the origin of the 
odor he had been trying to dodge all the morn- 
ing. He looked more disgusted than before 
when he heard that it was cheese ; but his only 
reply was : " It must be a merciful God who can 
forgive a smell like that ! " 

II. 

The above is introduced here in order to illus- 
trate the usual effect of an anecdote on conversa- 
tion. Commonly it kills it. That talk must be 
very well in hand, and under great headway, that 
an anecdote thrown in front of will not pitch off 
the track and wreck. And it makes little differ- 
ence what the anecdote is ; a poor one depresses 
the spirits, and casts a gloom over the company ; 
a good one begets others, and the talkers go to 
telling stories ; which is very good entertainment 
in moderation, but is not to be mistaken for that 



62 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

unwearying flow of argument, quaint remark, 
humorous color, and sprightly interchange of 
sentiments and opinions, called conversation. 

The reader will perceive that all hope is gone 
here of deciding whether Herbert could have 
written Tennyson's poems, or whether Tennyson 
could have dug as much money out of the Helio- 
gabulas Lode as Herbert did. The more one 
sees of life, I think the impression deepens that 
men, after all, play about the parts assigned 
them, according to their mental and moral gifts, 
which are limited and preordained, and that their 
entrances and exits are governed by a law no less 
certain because it is hidden. Perhaps nobody 
ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to 
do ; but nearly every one who tries his powers 
touches the walls of his being occasionally, and 
learns about how far to attempt to spring. There 
are no impossibilities to youth and inexperience ; 
but when a person has tried several times to 
reach high C and been coughed down, he is quite 
content to go down among the chorus. It is 
only the fools who keep straining at high C all 
their lives. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 63 

Mandeville here began to say that that re- 
minded him of something that happened when 
he was on the — 

But Herbert cut in with the observation 
that no matter what a man's single and several 
capacities and talents might be, he is controlled 
by his own mysterious individuality, which is 
what metaphysicians call the substance, all else 
being the mere accidents of the man. And this 
is the reason that we cannot with any certainty 
tell what any person will do or amount to, for, 
while we know his talents and abilities, we do not 
know the resulting whole, which is he himself. 

The Fire-Tender. So if you could take all 
the first-class qualities that we admire in men 
and women, and put them together into one 
being, you would n't be sure of the result ? 

Herbert. Certainly not. You would proba- 
bly have a monster. It takes a cook of long 
experience, with the best materials, to make a 
dish " taste good " ; and the " taste good " is the 
indefinable essence, the resulting balance or 
harmony which makes man or woman agreeable 
or beautiful or effective in the world. 



64 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

The Young Lady. That must be the reason 
why novelists fail so lamentably in almost all 
cases in creating good characters. They put in 
real traits, talents, dispositions, but the result of 
the synthesis is something that never was seen 
on earth before. 

The Fire-Tender. O, a good character in 
fiction is an inspiration. We admit this in 
poetry. It is as true of such creations as 
Colonel Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix 
Esmond. There is no patchwork about them. 

The Young Lady. Why was n't Thackeray 
ever inspired to create a noble woman ? 

The Fire- Tender. That is the standing 
conundrum with all the women. They will 
not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we 
shall have to admit that Thackeray was a writer 
for men. 

Herbert. Scott and the rest had drawn so 
many perfect women that Thackeray thought it 
was time for a real one. 

The Mistress. That's ill-natured. Thack- 
eray did, however, make ladies. If he had de- 
picted, with his searching pen, any of us just 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 65 

as we are, I doubt if we should have liked it 
much. 

Mandeville. That's just it. Thackeray 
never pretended to make ideals, and if the best 
novel is an idealization of human nature, then 
he was not the best novelist. When I was 
crossing the Channel — 

The Mistress. O dear, if we are to go to 
sea again, Mandeville, I move we have in the 
nuts and apples, and talk about our friends. 



III. 

There is this advantage in getting back to 
a wood fire on the hearth, that you return to a 
kind of simplicity ; you can scarcely imagine 
any one being stiffly conventional in front of it. 
It thaws out formality, and puts the company 
who sit around it into easy attitudes of mind 
and body, — lounging attitudes, Herbert said. 

And this brought up the subject of culture in 
America, especially as to manner. The back- 
log period having passed, we are beginning to 
have in society people of the cultured manner, 



66 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

as it is called, or polished bearing, in which the 
polish is the most noticeable thing about the 
man. Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity 
of the old-school gentleman, in whose presence 
the milkmaid was as much at her ease as the 
countess, but something far finer than this. 
These are the people of unruffled demeanor, 
who never forget it for a moment, and never let 
you forget it. Their presence is a constant re- 
buke to society. They are never "jolly" ; their 
laugh is never anything more than a well-bred 
smile ; they are never betrayed into any enthu- 
siasm. Enthusiasm is a sign of inexperience, 
of ignorance, of want of culture. They never 
lose themselves in any cause ; they never heart- 
ily praise any man or woman or book ; they are 
superior to all tides of feeling and all outbursts 
of passion. They are not even shocked at vul- 
garity. They are simply indifferent. They are 
calm, visibly calm, painfully calm ; and it is not 
the eternal, majestic calmness of the Sphinx 
either, but a rigid, self-conscious repression. 
You would like to put a bent pin in their chair 
when they are about calmly to sit down. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 6j 

A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hope- 
ful ; she has faith that her eggs are not china. 
These people appear to be sitting on china eggs. 
Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, 
flavor, out of them. We admire them without 
envy. They are too beautiful in their manners 
to be either prigs or snobs. They are at once 
our models and our despair. They are properly 
careful of themselves as models, for they know 
that if they should break, society would become 
a scene of mere animal confusion. 

Mandeville. I think that the best-bred peo- 
ple in the world are the English. 

The Young Lady. You mean at home. 

Mandeville. That's where I saw them* 
There is no nonsense about a cultivated English 
man or woman. They express themselves stur- 
dily and naturally, and with no subservience to 
the opinions of others. There 's a sort of hearty 
sincerity about them that I like. Ages of cul- 
ture on the island have gone deeper than the 
surface, and they have simpler and more natural 

* Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on 
the tops of omnibuses. 



68 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

manners than we. There is something good in 
the full, round tones of their voices. 

Herbert. Did you ever get into a diligence 
with a growling Englishman who had n't secured 
the place he wanted ? 

The Mistress. Did you ever see an English 
exquisite at the San Carlo, and hear him cry 
" Bwavo " ? 

Mandeville. At any rate, he acted out his 
nature, and was n't afraid to. 

The Fire-Tender. I think Mandeville is 
right, for once. The men of the best culture in 
England, in the middle and higher social classes, 
are what you would call good fellows, — easy 
and simple in manner, enthusiastic on occasion, 
and decidedly not cultivated into the smooth 
calmness of indifference which some Americans 
seem to regard as the sine qua non of good 
breeding. Their position is so assured that they 
do not need that lacquer of calmness of which 
we were speaking. 

The Young Lady. Which is different from 
the manner acquired by those who live a great 
deal in American hotels? 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 69 

The Mistress. Or the Washington manner ? 

Herbert. The last two are the same. 

The Fire-Tender. Not exactly. You think 
you can always tell if a man has learned his 
society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, 
you cannot always tell by a person's manner 
whether he is a habitud of hotels or of Washing- 
ton. But these are distinct from the perfect 
polish and politeness of indifferentism. 



IV. 

Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the 
fireside, and dissipates the idle illusions of con- 
versation, except under certain conditions. Let 
us say that the conditions are : a house in the 
country, with some forest-trees near, and a few 
evergreens, which are Christmas-trees all winter 
long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pen- 
dants, cheerful by day and grotesque by night ; 
a snow-storm beginning out of a dark sky, fall- 
ing in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its 
dazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, 
which is quite lost in the distant darkling spaces. 



yO BACKLOG STUDIES. 

If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and 
crystals, he soon gets an impression of infinity of 
resources that he can have from nothing else so 
powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. 
Nothing makes one feel at home like a great 
snow-storm. Our intelligent cat will quit the 
fire and sit for hours in the low window, watch- 
ing the falling snow with a serious and contented 
air. His thoughts are his own, but he is in ac- 
cord with the subtlest agencies of Nature ; on 
such a day he is charged with enough electricity 
to run a telegraphic battery, if it could be util- 
ized. The connection between thought and elec- 
tricity has not been exactly determined, but the 
cat is mentally very alert in certain conditions 
of the atmosphere. Feasting his eyes on the 
beautiful out-doors does not prevent his atten- 
tion to the slightest noise in the wainscot. 
And the snow-storm brings content, but not 
stupidity, to all the rest of the household. 

I can see Mandeville now, rising from his arm- 
chair and swinging his long arms as he strides 
to the window, and looks out and up, with, 
" Well, I declare ! " Herbert is pretending to 



BACKLOG STUDIES. J I 

read Herbert Spencer's tract on the philosophy 
of style ; but he loses much time in looking at 
the Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding 
her portfolio in her lap, — one of her everlasting 
letters to one of her fifty everlasting friends. 
She is one of the female patriots who save the 
post-office department from being a disastrous 
loss to the treasury. Herbert is thinking of 
the great radical difference in the two sexes, 
which legislation will probably never change ; 
that leads a woman always to write letters on 
her lap and a man on a table, — a distinction 
which is commended to the notice of the anti- 
suffragists. 

The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, 
is moving about the room with a feather-duster, 
whisking invisible dust from the picture-frames, 
and talking with the Parson, who has just come 
in, and is thawing the snow from his boots on 
the hearth. The Parson says the thermometer 
is 1 5°, and going down; that there is a snow- 
drift across the main church entrance three feet 
high, and that the house looks as if it had gone 
into winter quarters, religion and all. There 



72 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

were only ten persons at the conference meeting 
last night, and seven of those were women ; he 
wonders how many weather-proof Christians 
there are in the parish, anyhow. 

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, 
pretending to write ; but it is a poor day for 
ideas. He has written his wife's name about 
eleven hundred times, and cannot get any far- 
ther. He hears the Mistress tell the Parson 
that she believes he is trying to write a lecture 
on the Celtic Influence in Literature. The 
Parson says that it is a first-rate subject, if 
there were any such influence, and asks why 
he does n't take a shovel and make a path to 
the gate. Mandeville says that, by George ! he 
himself should like no better fun, but it would n't 
look well for a visitor to do it. The Fire-Ten- 
der, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, 
keeps on writing his wife's name. 

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talk- 
ing about the soup-relief, and about old Mrs. 
Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a present of 
one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on 
Christmas, when she had n't coal enough in the 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 73 

house to heat her gruel ; and about a family be- 
hind the church, a widow and six little children 
and three dogs ; and he did n't believe that any 
of them had known what it was to be warm in 
three weeks, and as to food, the woman said, she 
could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep 
the dogs alive. 

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to 
fill a basket with provisions and send it some- 
where ; and when the Fire-Tender brought in a 
new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to 
talk, and had been sitting drumming his feet 
and drawing deep sighs, attacked him. 

Mandeville. Speaking about culture and 
manners, did you ever notice how extremes 
meet, and that the savage bears himself very 
much like the sort of cultured persons we were 
talking of last night ? 

The Fire-Tender. In what respect ? 

Mandeville. Well, you take the North 
American Indian. He is never interested in 
anything, never surprised at anything. He has 
by nature that calmness and indifference which 
your people of culture have acquired. If he 



74 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

should go into literature as a critic, he would 
scalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless 
composure, and he would do nothing else. 

The Fire-Tender. Then you think the red 
man is a born gentleman of the highest breeding ? 

Mandeville. I think he is calm. 

The Fire-Tender. How is it about the 
war-path and all that ? 

Mandeville. O, these studiously calm and 
cultured people may have malice underneath. It 
takes them to give the most effective " little 
digs " ; they know how to stick in the pine-splin- 
ters and set fire to them. 

Herbert. But there is more in Mandeville's 
idea. You bring a red man into a picture-gal- 
lery, or a city full of fine architecture, or into a 
drawing-room crowded with objects of art and 
beauty, and he is apparently insensible to them 
all. Now I have seen country people, — and by 
country people I don't mean people necessarily 
who live in the country, for everything is mixed 
in these days, — some of the best people in the 
world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as 
the Indian would. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 75 

The Mistress. Herbert, if I did n't know you 
were cynical, I should say you were snobbish. 

Herbert. Such people think it a point of 
breeding never to speak of anything in your 
house, nor to appear to notice it, however beau- 
tiful it may be ; even to slyly glance around 
strains their notion of etiquette. They are like 
the countryman who confessed afterwards that 
he could hardly keep from laughing at one of 
Yankee Hill's entertainments. 

The Young Lady. Do you remember those 
English people at our house in Flushing last 
summer, who pleased us all so much with their 
apparent delight in everything that was artis- 
tic or tasteful, who explored the rooms and 
looked at everything, and were so interested ? 
I suppose that Herbert's country relations, many 
of whom live in the city, would have thought it 
very ill-bred. 

Mandeville. It 's just as I said. The Eng- 
lish, the best of them, have become so civilized that 
they express themselves, in speech and action, 
naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions. 

The Parson. I wish Mandeville would travel 
more, or that he had stayed at home. It 's won- 



76 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

derful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sickness will do 
for a man's judgment and cultivation. He is pre- 
pared to pronounce on art, manners, all kinds of 
culture. There is more nonsense talked about 
culture than about anything else. 

Herbert. The Parson reminds me of an 
American country minister I once met walking 
through the Vatican. You could n't impose 
upon him with any rubbish ; he tested every- 
thing by the standards of his native place, and 
there was little that could bear the test. He 
had the sly air of a man who could not be de- 
ceived, and he went about with his mouth in 
a pucker of incredulity. There is nothing so 
placid as rustic conceit. There was something 
very enjoyable about his calm superiority to all 
the treasures of art. 

Mandeville. And the Parson reminds me of 
another American minister, a consul in an Italian 
city, who said he was going up to Rome to have 
a thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a 
piece of his mind. Ministers seem to think that 
is their business. They serve it in such small 
pieces in order to make it go round. 

The Parson. Mandeville is an infidel. Come, 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



77 



let 's have some music ; nothing else will keep 
him in good humor till lunch-time. 
The Mistress. What shall it be ? 
The Parson. Give us the larghetto from Beet- 
hoven's second symphony. 

The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio. 
Herbert looks at the young lady. The Parson 
composes himself for critical purposes. Mande- 
ville settles himself in a chair and stretches his 
long legs nearly into the fire, remarking that 
music takes the tangles out of him. 

After the piece is finished, 
lunch is announced. It 
is still snowing. 




**C^_ 




-*f 



JH^T is difficult to explain the attraction 
which the uncanny and even the hor- 
rible have for most minds. I have 
seen a delicate woman half fascinated, but 
wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly 
of reptiles, vulgarly known as the " blowing 
viper " of the Alleghanies. She would look at it, 
and turn away with irresistible shuddering and the 
utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again 
and again, only to experience the same spasm of 
disgust. In spite of her aversion she must have 
relished the sort of electric mental shock that 
the sight gave her. 

I can no more account for the fascination 
for us of the stories of ghosts and " appear- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 79 

ances," and those weird tales in which the dead 
are the chief characters ; nor tell why we 
should fall into converse about them when 
the winter evenings are far spent, the embers 
are glazing over on the hearth, and the listener 
begins to hear the eerie noises in the house. 
At such times one's dreams become of impor- 
tance, and people like to tell them and dwell 
upon them, as if they were a link between the 
known and unknown, and could give us a 
clew to that ghostly region which in certain 
states of the mind we feel to be more real than 
that we see. 

Recently, when we were, so to say, sitting 
around the borders of the supernatural late at 
night, Mandeville related a dream of his which 
he assured us was true in every particular, and 
it interested us so much that we asked him to 
write it out. In doing so he has curtailed it, 
and to my mind shorn it of some of its more 
vivid and picturesque features. He might have 
worked it up with more art, and given it a finish 
which the narration now lacks, but I think 
best to insert it in its simplicity. It seems to 
me that it may properly be called, 



80 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

A NEW "VISION OF SIN." 

In the winter of 1850 I was a member of one 
of the leading colleges of this country. I was in 
moderate circumstances pecuniarily, though I was 
perhaps better furnished with less fleeting riches 
than many others. I was an incessant and indis- 
criminate reader of books. For the solid sciences 
I had no particular fancy, but with mental modes 
and habits, and especially with the eccentric and 
fantastic in the intellectual and spiritual opera- 
tions, I was tolerably familiar. All the literature 
of the supernatural was as real to me as the lab- 
oratory of the chemist, where I saw the continual 
struggle of material substances to evolve them- 
selves into more volatile, less palpable and coarse 
forms. My imagination, naturally vivid, stimu- 
lated by such repasts, nearly mastered me. At 
times I could scarcely tell where the material 
ceased and the immaterial began (if I may so 
express it) ; so that once and again I walked, as 
it seemed, from the solid earth onward upon an 
impalpable plain, where I heard the same voices, 
I think, that Joan of Arc heard call to her in the 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 8 1 

garden at Domremy. She was inspired, how- 
ever, while I only lacked exercise. I do not 
mean this in any literal sense ; I only describe a 
state of mind. I was at this time of spare habit, 
and nervous, excitable temperament. I was am- 
bitious, proud, and extremely sensitive. I cannot 
deny that I had seen something of the world, and 
had contracted about the average bad habits of 
young men who have the sole care of themselves, 
and rather bungle the matter. It is necessary to 
this relation to admit that I had seen a trifle 
more of what is called life than a young man 
ought to see, but at this period I was not only 
sick of my experience, but my habits were as cor- 
rect as those of any Pharisee in our college, and 
we had some very favorable specimens of that 
ancient sect. 

Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I 
was in a peculiar mental condition. I well re- 
member an illustration of it. I sat writing late 
one night, copying a prize essay, — a merely man- 
ual task, leaving my thoughts free. It was in 
June, a sultry night, and about midnight a wind 
arose, pouring in through the open windows, full 



82 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

of mournful reminiscence, not of this, but of 
other summers, — the same wind that De Quincey 
heard at noonday in midsummer blowing through 
the room where he stood, a mere boy, by the side 
of his dead sister, — a wind centuries old. As I 
wrote on mechanically I became conscious of a 
presence in the room, though I did not lift my 
eyes from the paper on which I wrote. Gradually 
I came to know that my grandmother — dead so 
long ago that I laughed at the idea — was in the 
room. She stood beside her old-fashioned spin- 
ning-wheel, and quite near me. She wore a plain 
muslin cap with a high puff in the crown, a short 
woollen gown, a white and blue checked apron, 
and shoes with heels. She did not regard me, 
but stood facing the wheel, with the left hand 
near the spindle, holding lightly between the 
thumb and forefinger the white roll of wool 
which was being spun and twisted on it. In her 
right hand she held a small stick. I heard the 
sharp click of this against the spokes of the 
wheel, then the hum of the wheel, the buzz of 
the spindles as the twisting yarn was teased by 
the whirl of its point, then a step backwards, a 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 83 

pause, a step forward and the running of the 
yarn upon the spindle, and again a backward 
step, the drawing out of the roll and the droning 
and hum of the wheel, — most mournful, hopeless 
sound that ever fell on mortal ear. Since child- 
hood it has haunted me. All this time I wrote, 
and I could hear distinctly the scratching of the 
pen upon the paper. But she stood behind me 
(why I did not turn my head I never knew), 
pacing backward and forward by the spinning- 
wheel, just as I had a hundred times seen her in 
childhood in the old kitchen on drowsy summer 
afternoons. And I heard the step, the buzz and 
whirl of the spindle, and the monotonous and 
dreary hum of the mournful wheel. Whether her 
face was ashy pale and looked as if it might 
crumble at the touch, and the border of her 
white cap trembled in the June wind that blew, 
I cannot say, for I tell you I did not see her. 
But I know she was there, spinning yarn that 
had been knit into hose years and years ago by 
our fireside. For I was in full possession of my 
faculties, and never copied more neatly and legi- 
bly any manuscript than I did the one that night. 



84 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

And there the phantom (I use the word out of 
deference to a public prejudice on this subject) 
most persistently remained until my task was 
finished, and, closing the portfolio, I abruptly 
rose. Did I see anything ? That is a silly and 
ignorant question. Could I see the wind which 
had now risen stronger, and drove a few cloud- 
scuds across the sky, filling the night, somehow, 
with a longing that was not altogether born of 
reminiscence ? 

In the winter following, in January, I made an 
effort to give up the use of tobacco, — a habit 
in which I was confirmed, and of which I have 
nothing more to say than this : that I should 
attribute to it almost all the sin and misery in 
the world, did I not remember that the old 
Romans attained a very considerable state of 
corruption without the assistance of the Virginia 
plant. 

On the night of the third day of my absti- 
nence, rendered more nervous and excitable than 
usual by the privation, I retired late, and later 
still I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a 
dream, vivid, illuminated, more real than any 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 85 

event of my life. I was at home, and fell sick. 
The illness developed into a fever, and then a 
delirium set in, not an intellectual blank, but a 
misty and most delicious wandering in places 
of incomparable beauty. I learned subsequently 
that our regular physician was not certain to 
finish me, when a consultation was callecl, which 
did the business. I have the satisfaction of 
knowing that they were of the proper school. 
I lay sick for three days. 

On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I 
died. 

The sensation was not unpleasant. It was not 
a sudden shock. I passed out of my body as one 
would walk from the door of his house. There 
the body lay, — a blank, so far as I was con- 
cerned, and only interesting to me as I was 
rather entertained with watching the respect 
paid to it. My friends stood about the bedside, 
regarding me (as they seemed to suppose), while 
I, in a different part of the room, could hardly 
repress a smile at their mistake, solemnized as 
they were, and I too, for that matter, by my 
recent demise. A sensation (the word you see 



86 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

is material and inappropriate) of etherealization 
and imponderability pervaded me, and I was not 
sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass as I 
now perceived myself to be, lying there on the 
bed. — When I speak of my death, let me be 
understood to say that there was no change, ex- 
cept that I passed out of my body and floated to 
the top of a bookcase in the corner of the room, 
from which I looked down. For a moment I 
was interested to see my person from the out- 
side, but thereafter I was quite indifferent to 
the body. I was now simply soul. I seemed 
to be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about six 
inches in diameter. I saw and heard everything 
as before. Of course, matter was no obstacle to 
me, and I went easily and quickly wherever I 
willed to go. There was none of that tedious 
process of communicating my wishes to the 
nerves, and from them to the muscles. I sim- 
ply resolved to be at a particular place, and 
I was there. It was better than the tele- 
graph. 

It seemed to have been intimated to me at 
my death (birth I half incline to call it) that I 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 87 

could remain on this earth for four weeks after 
my decease, during which time I could amuse 
myself as I chose. 

I chose, in the first place, to see myself de- 
cently buried, to stay by myself to the last, and 
attend my own funeral for once. As most of 
those referred to in this true narrative are still 
living, I am forbidden to indulge in personali- 
ties, nor shall I dare to say exactly how my 
death affected my friends, even the home circle. 
Whatever others did, I sat up with myself and 
kept awake. I saw the " pennies " used instead 
of the " quarters " which I should have preferred. 
I saw myself " laid out," a phrase that has come 
to have such a slang meaning that I smile as 
I write it. When the body was put into the 
coffin I took my place on the lid. 

I cannot recall all the details, and they are 
commonplace besides. The funeral took place 
at the church. We all rode thither in carriages, 
and I, not fancying my place in mine, rode on 
the outside with the undertaker, whom I found 
to be a good deal more jolly than he looked to 
be. The coffin was placed in front of the pulpit 



88 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

when we arrived. I took my station on the pul- 
pit cushion, from which elevation I had an ad- 
mirable view of all the ceremonies, and could 
hear the sermon. How distinctly I remember 
the services. I think I could even at this dis- 
tance write out the sermon. The tune sung was 
of the usual country selection, — Mount Vernon. 
I recall the text. I was rather flattered by the 
tribute paid to me, and my future was spoken 
of gravely and as kindly as possible, — indeed 
with remarkable charity, considering that the 
minister was not aware of my presence. I 
used to beat him at chess, and I thought, even 
then, of the last game ; for, however solemn the 
occasion might be to others, it was not so to 
me. With what interest I watched my kins- 
folks and neighbors as they filed past for the 
last look! I saw, and I remember, who pulled 
a long face for the occasion and who exhibited 
genuine sadness. I learned with the most dread- 
ful certainty what people really thought of me. 
It was a revelation never forgotten. 

Several particular acquaintances of mine were 
talking on the steps as we passed out. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 89 

" Well, old Starr 's gone up. Sudden, was n't 
it ? He was a first-rate fellow." 

" Yes, queer about some things ; but he had 
some mighty good streaks," said another. And 
so they ran on. 

Streaks ! So that is the reputation one gets 
during twenty years of life in this world. Streaks ! 

After the funeral I rode home with the family. 
It was pleasanter than the ride down, though it 
seemed sad to my relations. They did not men- 
tion me, however, and I may remark, that al- 
though I stayed about home for a week, I never 
heard my name mentioned by any of the family. 
Arrived at home, the tea-kettle was put on and 
supper got ready. This seemed to lift the gloom 
a little, and under the influence of the tea they 
brightened up and gradually got more cheer-» 
ful. They discussed the sermon and the sing- 
ing, and the mistake of the sexton in digging the 
grave in the wrong place, and the large congre^ 
gation. From the mantel-piece I watched the 
group. They had waffles for supper, — of which 
I had been exceedingly fond, but now I saw 
them disappear without a sigh. 



90 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

For the first day or two of my sojourn at home 
I was here and there at all the neighbors, and 
heard a good deal about my life and character, 
some of which was not very pleasant, but very 
wholesome, doubtless, for me to hear. At the 
expiration of a week this amusement ceased to 
be such, for I ceased to be talked of. I realized 
the fact that I was dead and gone. 

By an act of volition I found myself back at 
college. I floated into my own room, which was 
empty. I went to the room of my two warmest 
friends, whose friendship I was and am yet as- 
sured of. As usual, half a dozen of our set were 
lounging there. A game of whist was just com- 
mencing. I perched on a bust of Dante on the 
top of the book-shelves, where I could see two 
of the hands and give a good guess at a third. 
My particular friend Timmins was just shuffling 
the cards. 

"Be hanged if it isn't lonesome without old 
Starr. Did you cut ? I should like to see him 
lounge in now with his pipe, and with feet on 
the mantel-piece proceed to expound on the du- 
plex functions of the soul." 



BACKLOG STUDIES. gi 

" There — misdeal," said his vis-a-vis. " Hope 
there 's been no misdeal for old Starr." 

" Spades, did you say ? " the talk ran on. " I 
never knew Starr was sickly." 

" No more was he ; stouter than you are, and 
as brave and plucky as he was strong. By 
George, fellows, how we do get cut down ! Last 
term little Stubbs, and now one of the best fel- 
lows in the class." 

" How suddenly he did pop off, — one for 
game, honors easy, — he was good for the 
Spouts' Medal this year, too." 

" Remember the joke he played on Prof. A., 
freshman year ? " asked another. 

" Remember he borrowed ten dollars of me 
about that time," said Timmins's partner, gather- 
ing the cards for a new deal. 

" Guess he is the only one who ever did," re- 
torted some one. 

And so the talk went on, mingled with whist- 
talk, reminiscent of me, not all exactly what I 
would have chosen to go into my biography, but 
on the whole kind and tender, after the fashion 
of the boys. At least I was in their thoughts, 



92 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

and I could see was a good deal regretted, — 
so I passed a very pleasant 1 evening. Most of 
those present were of my society, and wore crape 
on their badges, and all wore the usual crape on 
the left arm. I learned that the following after- 
noon a eulogy would be delivered on me in the 
chapel. 

The eulogy was delivered before members of 
our society and others, the next afternoon, in the 
chapel. I need not say that I was present. In- 
deed, I was perched on the desk, within reach of 
the speaker's hand. The apotheosis was pro- 
nounced by my most intimate friend, Timmins, 
and I must say he did me ample justice. He 
never was accustomed to " draw it very mild " 
(to use a vulgarism which I dislike) when he had 
his head, and on this occasion he entered into 
the matter with the zeal of a true friend, and a 
young man who never expected to have another 
occasion to sing a public "In Memonam." It 
made my hair stand on end, — metaphorically, 
of course. From my childhood I had been ex- 
tremely precocious. There were anecdotes of 
preternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 93 



knows where, of my eagerness to learn, of my 
adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and of my 
arduous struggles with chill penury, which was 
not able (as it appeared) to repress my rage, 
until I entered this institution, of which I had 
been ornament, pride, cynosure, and fair prom- 
ising bud blasted while yet its fragrance was 
mingled with the dew of its youth. Once 
launched upon my college days, Timmins went 
on with all sails spread. I had, as it were, to 
hold on to the pulpit cushion. Latin, Greek, 
the old literatures I was perfect master of; all 
history was merely a light repast to me ; mathe- 
matics I glanced at, and it disappeared ; in the 
clouds of modern philosophy I was wrapped but 
not obscured ; over the field of light literature I 
familiarly roamed as the honey-bee over the wide 
fields of clover which blossom white in the Junes 
of this world ! My life was pure, my character 
spotless, my name was inscribed among the 
names of those deathless few who were not 
born to die ! 

It was a noble eulogy, and I felt before he 
finished, though I had misgivings at the begin- 



94 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

ning, that I deserved it all. The effect on the 
audience was a little different. They said it 
was a " strong " oration, and I think Timmins 
got more credit by it than I did. After the 
performance they stood about the chapel, talk- 
ing in a subdued tone, and seemed to be a good 
deal impressed by what they had heard, or per- 
haps by thoughts of the departed. At least 
they all soon went over to Austin's and called 
for beer. My particular friends called for it 
twice. Then they all lit pipes. The old gro- 
cery keeper was good enough to say that I was 
no fool, if I did go off owing him four dollars. 
To the credit of human nature, let me here 
record that the fellows were touched by this 
remark reflecting upon my memory, and imme- 
diately made up a purse and paid the bill, — - 
that is, they told the old man to charge it over 
to them. College boys are rich in credit and 
the possibilities of life. 

It is needless to dwell upon the days I passed 
at college during this probation. So far as I 
could see, everything went on as it I were there, 
or had never been there. I could not even see 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 95 

the place where I had dropped out of the ranks. 
Occasionally I heard my name, but I must say 
that four weeks was quite long enough to stay 
in a world that had pretty much forgotten me. 
There is no great satisfaction in being dragged 
up to light now and then, like an old letter 
The case was somewhat different with the 
people with whom I had boarded. They were 
relations of mine, and I often saw them weep, 
and they talked of me a good deal at twilight 
and Sunday nights, especially the youngest one, 
Carrie, who was handsomer than any one I knew, 
and not much older than I. I never used to 
imagine that she cared particularly for me, nor 
would she have done so, if I had lived, but death 
brought with it a sort of sentimental regret, 
which, with the help of a daguerreotype, she 
nursed into quite a little passion. I spent most 
of my time there, for it was more congenial than 
the college. 

But time hastened. The last sand of proba- 
tion leaked out of the glass. One day, while 
Carrie played (for me, though she knew it not) 
one of Mendelssohn's "songs without words," I 



96 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

suddenly, yet gently, without self-effort or voli- 
tion, moved from the house, floated in the air, 
rose higher, higher, by an easy, delicious, exult- 
ant, yet inconceivably rapid motion. The ec- 
stasy of that triumphant flight ! Groves, trees, 
houses, the landscape, dimmed, faded, fled away 
beneath me. Upward mounting, as on angels' 
wings, with no effort, till the earth hung be- 
neath me a round black ball swinging, remote, 
in the universal ether. Upward mounting, till 
the earth, no longer bathed in the sun's rays, 
went out to my sight, — disappeared in the 
blank. Constellations, before seen from afar, I 
sailed among. Stars, too remote for shining on 
earth, I neared, and found to be round globes 
flying through space with a velocity only 
equalled by my own. New worlds continually 
opened on my sight ; new fields of everlasting 
space opened and closed behind me. 

For days and days — it seemed a mortal for- 
ever — I mounted up the great heavens, whose 
everlasting doors swung wide. How the worlds 
and systems, stars, constellations, neared me, 
blazed and flashed in splendor, and fled away/ 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



97 



At length, — was it not a thousand years ? — I 
saw before me, yet afar off, a wall, the rocky 
bourn of that country whence travellers come 
not back, a battlement wider than I could guess, 
the height of which I could not see, the depth of 
which was infinite. As I approached, it shone 
with a splendor never yet beheld on earth. Its 
solid substance was built of jewels the rarest, 
and stones of priceless value. It seemed like 
one solid stone, and yet all the colors of the 
rainbow were contained in it. The ruby, the 
diamond, the emerald, the carbuncle, the topaz, 
the amethyst, the sapphire ; of them the wall 
was built up in harmonious combination. So 
brilliant was it that all the space I floated in was 
full of the splendor. So mild was it and so 
translucent, that I could look for miles into its 
clear depths. 

Rapidly nearing this heavenly battlement, an 
immense niche was disclosed in its solid face. 
The floor was one large ruby. Its sloping sides 
were of pearl. Before I was aware I stood within 
the brilliant recess. I say I stood there, for I was 
there bodily, in my habit as I lived ; how, I can- 



98 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

not explain. Was it the resurrection of the 
body ? Before me rose, a thousand feet in 
height, a wonderful gate of flashing diamond. 
Beside it sat a venerable man, with long white 
beard, a robe of light gray, ancient sandals, 
and a golden key hanging by a cord from his 
waist. In the serene beauty of his noble fea- 
tures I saw justice and mercy had met and 
were reconciled. I cannot describe the majesty 
of his bearing or the benignity of his appear- 
ance. It is needless to say that I stood before 
St. Peter, who sits at the Celestial Gate. 

I humbly approached, and begged admission. 
St. Peter arose, and regarded me kindly, yet 
inquiringly. 

" What is your name ? " asked he, " and from 
what place do you come ? " 

I answered, and, wishing to give a name well 
known, said I was from Washington, United 
States. He looked doubtful, as if he had never 
heard the name before. 

"Give me," said he, "a full account of your' 
whole life." 

I felt instantaneously that there was no con- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 99 

cealment possible ; all disguise fell away, and an 
unknown power forced me to speak absolute and 
exact truth. I detailed the events of my life as 
well as I could, and the good man was not a lit- 
tle affected by the recital of my early trials, pov- 
erty, and temptation. It did not seem a very 
good life when spread out in that presence, and 
I trembled as I proceeded ; but I plead youth, 
inexperience, and bad examples. 

" Have you been accustomed," he said, after a 
time, rather sadly, " to break the Sabbath ? " 

I told him frankly that I had been rather lax 
in that matter, especially at college. I often 
went to sleep in the chapel on Sunday, when 
I was not reading some entertaining book. He 
then asked who the preacher was, and when I 
told him, he remarked that I was not so much 
to blame as he had supposed. 

" Have you," he went on, " ever stolen, or told 
any lie ? " 

I was able to say no, except admitting as to 
the first usual college " conveyances," and as to 
the last an occasional " blinder " to the profes- 
sors. He was gracious enough to say that these, 

LofC. 



IOO BACKLOG STUDIES. 

could be overlooked as incident to the occa- 
sion. 

" Have you ever been dissipated, living riot- 
ously and keeping late hours ? " 

" Yes." 

This also could be forgiven me as an incident 
of youth. 

" Did you ever," he went on, " commit the 
crime of using intoxicating drinks as a bever- 
age?" 

I answered that I had never been a habitual 
drinker, that I had never been what was called a 
" moderate drinker," that I had never gone to a 
bar and drank alone ; but that I had been ac- 
customed, in company with other young men, on 
convivial occasions to taste the pleasures of the 
flowing bowl, sometimes to excess, but that I had 
also tasted the pains of it, and for months before 
my demise had refrained from liquor altogether. 
The holy man looked grave, but, after reflection, 
said this might also be overlooked in a young 
man. 

" What," continued he, in tones still more 
serious, " has been your conduct with regard 
to the other sex ? " 



BACKLOG STUDIES. IOI 

I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear. I 
pulled from my bosom a little book like the 
one Leperello exhibits in the opera of Don 
Giovanni. There, I said, was a record of my 
flirtation and inconstancy. I waited long for the 
decision, but it came in mercy. 

" Rise," he cried ; " young men will be young 
men, I suppose. We shall forgive this also to 
your youth and penitence." 

"Your examination is satisfactory," he in- 
formed me, after a pause ; " you can now enter 
the abodes of the happy." 

Joy leaped within me. We approached the 
gate. The key turned in the lock. The gate 
swung noiselessly on its hinges a little open. 
Out flashed upon me unknown splendors. 
What I saw in that momentary gleam I shall 
never whisper in mortal ears. I stood upon 
the threshold, just about to enter. 

" Stop ! one moment/ exclaimed St. Peter, 
laying his hand on my shoulder \ "I have one 
more question to ask you." 

I turned toward him. 

" Young man, did you ever tise tpbacco f " 



102 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

" I both smoked and chewed in my lifetime," 
I faltered, "but—" 

" Then to hell with you ! " he shouted in 
a voice of thunder. 

Instantly the gate closed without noise, and I 
was flung, hurled, from the battlement, down ! 
down ! down ! Faster and faster I sank in a 
dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable 
space of gloom. The light faded. Dampness 
and darkness were round about me. As before, 
for days and days I rose exultant in the light, 
so now forever I sank into thickening darkness, 
— and yet not darkness, but a pale, ashy light 
more fearful. 

In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall 
before me. It ran up and down and on either 
hand endlessly into the night. It was solid, 
black, terrible in its frowning massiveness. 

Straightway I alighted at the gate, — a dismal 
crevice hewn into the dripping rock. The gate 
was wide open, and there sat — I knew him at 
once ; who does not ? — the Arch Enemy of 
mankind. He cocked his eye at me in an im- 
pudent, low, familiar manner that disgusted me. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. IO3 

I saw that I was not to be treated like a gen- 
tleman. 

"Well, young man," said he, rising, with a 
queer grin on his face, " what are you sent here 
for ? " 

" For using tobacco," I replied. 

" Ho ! " shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar 
to devils, " that's what most of 'em are sent here 
for now." 

Without more ado, he called four lesser imps, 
who ushered me within. What a dreadful plain 
lay before me ! There was a vast city laid out 
in regular streets, but there were no houses. 
Along the streets were places of torment and 
torture exceedingly ingenious and disagreeable. 
For miles and miles, it seemed, I followed my 
conductors through these horrors. Here was a 
deep vat of burning tar. Here were rows of fiery; 
ovens. I noticed several immense caldron ket- 
tles of boiling oil, upon the rims of which little 
devils sat, with pitchforks in hand, and poked 
down the helpless victims who floundered in the 
liquid. But I forbear to go into unseemly de- 
tails. The whole scene is as vivid in my mind 
as any earthly landscape. 



104 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



After an hour's walk my tormentors halted 
before the mouth of an oven, — a furnace heated 
seven times, and now roaring with flames. They 
grasped me, one hold of each hand and foot. 
Standing before the blazing mouth, they, with 
a swing, and a "one, two, three — " 

I again assure the reader that in this narra- 
tive I have set down nothing that was not ac- 
tually dreamed, and much, very much of this 
wonderful vision I have been obliged to omit. 

Hcec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young 
man to leave off the use of tobacco. 





.WISH I could fitly celebrate the joy- 
ousness of the New England winter. 
Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly 
believed in it. But scepticism comes in with the 
south-wind. When that begins to blow, one 
feels the foundations of his belief breaking up. 
This is only another way of saying that it is 
more difficult, if it be not impossible, to freeze 
out orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it is to 
thaw it out ; though it is a mere fancy to suppose 
that this is the reason why the martyrs, of all 
creeds, were burned at the stake. There is said 
to be a great relaxation in New England of the 
ancient strictness in the direction of toleration of 
opinion, called by some a lowering of the standard, 



106 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

and by others a raising of the banner of liberality ; 
it might be an interesting inquiry how much this 
change is due to another change, — the softening 
of the New England winter and the shifting of 
the Gulf Stream. It is the fashion nowadays to 
refer almost everything to physical causes, and 
this hint is a gratuitous contribution to the sci- 
ence of metaphysical physics. 

The hindrance to entering fully into the joy- 
ousness of a New England winter, except far 
inland among the mountains, is the south-wind. 
It is a grateful wind, and has done more, I sus- 
pect, to demoralize society than any other. It 
is not necessary to remember that it filled the 
silken sails of Cleopatra's galley. It blows over 
New England every few days, and is in some 
portions of it the prevailing wind. That it 
brings the soft clouds, and sometimes continues 
long enough to almost deceive the expectant 
buds of the fruit-trees, and to tempt the robin 
from the secluded evergreen copses, may be 
nothing ; but it takes the tone out of the mind, 
and engenders discontent, making one long for 
the tropics ; it feeds the weakened imagination 



BACKLOG STUDIES. I07 

on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we know- 
it we become demoralized, and shrink from the 
tonic of the sudden change to sharp weather, as 
the steamed hydropathic patient does from the 
plunge. It is the insidious temptation that as- 
sails us when we are braced up to profit by the 
invigorating rigor of winter. 

Perhaps the influence of the four great winds 
on character is only a fancied one ; but it is evi- 
dent on temperament, which is not altogether a 
matter of temperature, although the good old 
deacon used to say, in his humble, simple way, 
that his third wife was a very good woman, but 
her " temperature was very different from that of 
the other two." The north-wind is full of cour- 
age, and puts the stamina of endurance into a 
man, and it probably would into a woman too if 
there were a series of resolutions passed to that 
effect. The west-wind is hopeful ; it has prom- 
ise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlan- 
tic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that 
ever blew. The east-wind is peevishness ; it is 
mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one 
up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the 



108 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind 
sits in that quarter. The south-wind is full of 
longing and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of 
luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of mod- 
ern poetry, — at any rate, modern poetry needs 
a change of air. I am not sure but the south is 
the most powerful of the winds, because of its 
sweet persuasiveness. Nothing so stirs the 
blood in spring, when it comes up out of the 
tropical latitude ; it makes men " longen to gon 
on pilgrimages." 

I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it 
is quite proper to do in an essay) on the south- 
wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying 
With Us, beginning, — 

" Out of a drifting southern cloud 

My soul heard the night-bird cry/' — 

but it never got any farther than this. The 
Young Lady said it was exceedingly difficult to 
write the next two lines, because not only rhyme 
but meaning had to be procured. And this is 
true ; anybody can write first lines, and that is 
probably the reason we have so many poems 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 109 

which seem to have been begun in just this way, 
that is, with a south-wind-longing without any- 
thought in it, and it is very fortunate when there 
is not wind enough to finish them. This emo- 
tional, poem, if I may so call it, was begun after 
Herbert went away. I liked it, and thought it 
was what is called " suggestive " ; although I 
did not understand it, especially what the night- 
bird was ; and I am afraid I hurt the Young 
Lady's feelings by asking her if she meant Her- 
bert by the " night-bird," — a very absurd sug- 
gestion about two unsentimental people. She 
said, " Nonsense " ; but she afterwards told the 
Mistress that there were emotions that one could 
never put into words without the danger of being 
ridiculous ; a profound truth. And yet I should 
not like to say that there is not a tender lone- 
someness in love that can get comfort out of a 
night-bird in a cloud, if there be such a thing. 
Analysis is the death of sentiment. 

But to return to the winds. Certain people 
impress us as the winds do. Mandeville never 
comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor and 
healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty man- 



HO BACKLOG STUDIES. 

ner, and in his wholesome way of looking at 
things. The Parson, you would say, was the 
east-wind, and only his intimates know that his 
peevishness is only a querulous humor. In the 
fair west-wind I know the Mistress herself, full of 
hope, and always the first one to discover a bit ot 
blue in a cloudy sky. It would not be just to 
apply what I have said of the south-wind to any 
of our visitors, but it did blow a little while 
Herbert was here. 



II. 

In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellect- 
ual sparkle in it, I suppose that no luxurious 
lounging on tropical isles set in tropical seas 
compares with the positive happiness one may 
have before a great wood fire (not two sticks laid 
crossways in a grate), with a veritable New 
England winter raging outside. In order to get 
the highest enjoyment, the faculties must be 
alert, and not be lulled into a mere recipient 
dulness. There are those who prefer a warm 
bath to a brisk walk in the inspiring air, where 



BACKLOG STUDIES. Ill 

ten thousand keen influences minister to the 
sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves. 
There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon 
outline and a delicacy of color on distant hills 
which are wanting in summer, and which convey 
to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and 
a refinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sen- 
suous, not at all sentimental, and almost passing 
the intellectual line into the spiritual. 

I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and 
he said that I was drawing it altogether too fine ; 
that he experienced sensations of pleasure in 
being out in almost all weathers ; that he rather 
liked to breast a north-wind, and that there was 
a certain inspiration in sharp outlines and in a 
landscape in trim winter-quarters, with stripped 
trees, and, as it were, scudding through the 
season under bare poles ; but that he must say 
that he preferred the weather in which he could 
sit on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring 
sun on his back, and hear the stir of the leaves 
and the birds beginning their housekeeping. 

A very pretty idea for Mandeville ; and I fear 
he is getting to have private thoughts about the 



112 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likes the ro- 
bustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been 
a little suspicious to hear him express the hope 
that we shall have an early spring. 

I wonder how many people there are in New 
England who know the glory and inspiration of a 
winter walk just before sunset, and that, too, not 
only on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame 
with a rosy color, which has no suggestion of lan- 
guor or unsatisfied longing in it, but on dull days, 
when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon, 
full of threats of storm and the terrors of the 
gathering night. We are very busy with our own 
affairs, but there is always something going on 
out-doors worth looking at ; and there is seldom 
an hour before sunset that has not some special 
attraction. And, besides, it puts one in the mood 
for the cheer and comfort of the open fire at 
home. 

Probably if the people of New England could 
have a plebiscitum on their weather, they would 
vote against it, especially against winter. Almost 
no one speaks well of winter. And this suggests 
the idea that most people here were either born 



BACKLOG STUDIES. II3 

in the wrong place, or do not know what is best 
for them. I doubt if these grumblers would be 
any better satisfied, or would turn out as well, 
in the tropics. Everybody knows our virtues, — 
at least if they believe half we tell them, — and 
for delicate beauty, that rare plant, I should look 
among the girls of the New England hills as 
confidently as anywhere, and I have travelled as 
far south as New Jersey, and west of the Genesee 
Valley. Indeed, it would be easy to show that 
the parents of the pretty girls in the West emi- 
grated from New England. And yet — such is 
the mystery of Providence — no one would expect 
that one of the sweetest and most delicate flow- 
ers that blooms, the trailing arbutus, would blos- 
som in this inhospitable climate, and peep forth 
from the edge of a snow-bank at that. 

It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer 
that the thousands of people who are dissatisfied 
with their climate do not seek a more congenial 
one — or stop grumbling. The world is so small, 
and all parts of it are so accessible, it has so 
many varieties of climate, that one could surely 
suit himself by searching ; and, then, is it worth 



114 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

while to waste our one short life in the midst of 
unpleasant surroundings and in a constant friction 
with that which is disagreeable? One would 
suppose that people set down on this little globe 
would seek places on it most agreeable to them- 
selves. It must be that they are much more 
content with the climate and country upon which 
they happen, by the accident of their birth, than 
they pretend to be. 

III. 

Home sympathies and charities are most active 
in the winter. Coming in from my late walk, — 
in fact driven in by a hurrying north-wind that 
would brook no delay, — a wind that brought 
snow that did not seem to fall out of a bounteous 
sky, but to be blown from polar fields, — I find 
the Mistress returned from town, all in a glow 
of philanthropic excitement. 

There has been a meeting of a woman's asso- 
ciation for Ameliorating the Condition of some- 
body — here at home. Any one can belong to 
it by paying a dollar, and. for twenty dollars one 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 115 

can become a life Ameliorator, — a sort of life 
assurance. The Mistress, at the meeting, I 
believe, " seconded the motion " several times, 
and is one of the Vice-Presidents ; and this fam- 
ily honor makes me feel almost as if I were a 
president of something myself. These little dis- 
tinctions are among the sweetest things in life, 
and to see one's name officially printed stimu- 
lates his charity, and is almost as satisfactory as 
being the chairman of a committee or the mover 
of a resolution. It is, I think, fortunate, and not 
at all discreditable, that our little vanity, which 
is reckoned among our weaknesses, is thus made 
to contribute to the activity of our nobler powers. 
Whatever we may say, we all of us like distinc- 
tion ; and probably there is no more subtle flat- 
tery than that conveyed in the whisper, " That 's 
he," " That 's she." 

There used to be a society for ameliorating 
the condition of the Jews ; but they were found 
to be so much more adept than other people in 
ameliorating their own condition that I suppose 
it was given up. Mandeville says that to his 
knowledge there are a great many people who 



Il6 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be con- 
spicuously busy in society, or to earn a little 
something in a good cause. They seem to think 
that the world owes them a living because they 
are philanthropists. In this Mandeville does not 
speak with his usual charity. It is evident that 
there are Jews, and some Gentiles, whose condi- 
tion needs ameliorating, and if very little is really 
accomplished in the effort for them, it always 
remains true that the charitable reap a ben- 
efit to themselves. It is one of the beautiful 
compensations of this life that no one can sin- 
cerely try to help another without helping 
himself. 

Our Next-Door Neighbor. Why is it that 
almost all philanthropists and reformers are dis- 
agreeable ? 

I ought to explain who our next-door neighbor 
is. He is the person who comes in without 
knocking, drops in in the most natural way, as 
his wife does also, and not seldom in time to 
take the after-dinner cup of tea before the fire. 
Formal society begins as soon as you lock your 
doors, and only admit visitors through the media 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 117 

of bells and servants. It is lucky for us that our 
next-door neighbor is honest. 

The Parson. Why do you class reformers 
and philanthropists together ? Those usually 
called reformers are not philanthropists at all. 
They are agitators. Finding the world disagree- 
able to themselves, they wish to make it as 
unpleasant to others as possible. 

Mandeville. That 's a noble view of your 
fellow-men. 

Our Next Door. Well, granting the distinc- 
tion, why are both apt to be unpleasant people 
to live with ? 

The Parson. As if the unpleasant people 
who won't mind their own business were confined 
to the classes you mention ! Some of the best 
people I know are philanthropists, — I mean the 
genuine ones, and not the uneasy busybodies 
seeking notoriety as a means of living. 

The Fire-Tender. It is not altogether the 
not minding their own business. Nobody does 
that. The usual explanation is, that people with 
one idea are tedious. But that is not all of it. 
For few persons have more than one idea,^ 



Il8 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

ministers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, manufac- 
turers, merchants, — they all think the world 
they live in is the central one. 

Mandeville. And you might add authors. 
To them nearly all the life of the world is in 
letters, and I suppose they would be astonished 
if they knew how little the thoughts of the 
majority of people are occupied with books, 
and with all that vast thought-circulation which 
is the vital current of the world to book-men. 
Newspapers have reached their present power by 
becoming unliterary, and reflecting all the inter- 
ests of the world. 

The Mistress. I have noticed one thing, that 
the most popular persons in society are those 
who take the world as it is, find the least fault, 
and have no hobbies. They are always wanted 
to dinner. 

The Young Lady. And the other kind 
always appear to me to want a dinner. 

The Fire-Tender. It seems to me that the 
real reason why reformers and some philanthro- 
pists are unpopular is, that they disturb our 
serenity and make us conscious of our own short- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



II 9 



comings. It is only now and then that a whole 
people get a spasm of reformatory fervor, of 
investigation and regeneration. At other times 
they rather hate those who disturb their quiet. 

Our Next Door. Professional reformers and 
philanthropists are insufferably conceited and 
intolerant. \ 

The Mistress. Everything depends upon the 
spirit in which a reform or a scheme of philan- 
thropy is conducted. 

Mandeville. I attended a protracted con- 
vention of reformers of a certain evil, once, and 
had the pleasure of taking dinner with a table- 
ful of them. It was one of those country din- 
ners accompanied with green tea. Every one 
disagreed with every one else, and you would n't 
wonder at it, if you had seen them. They were 
people with whom good food would n't agree. 
George Thompson was expected at the conven- 
tion, and I remember that there was almost a 
cordiality in the talk about him, until one sallow 
brother casually mentioned that George took 
snuff, — when a chorus of deprecatory groans 
went up from the table. One long-faced maiden 



120 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

in spectacles, with purple ribbons in her hair, 
who drank five cups of tea by my count, declared 
that she was perfectly disgusted, and did n't 
want to hear him speak. In the course of the 
meal the talk ran upon the discipline of children, 
and how to administer punishment. I was quite 
taken by the remark of a thin, dyspeptic man 
who summed up the matter by growling out in a 
harsh, deep bass voice, " Punish 'em in love ! " 
It sounded as if he had said, " Shoot 'em on the 
spot ! " 

The Parson. I supposed you would say that 
he was a minister. There is another thing about 
those people. I think they are working against 
the course of nature. Nature is entirely indif- 
ferent to any reform. She perpetuates a fault as 
persistently as a virtue. There 's a split in my 
thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continued 
for many years, notwithstanding all my efforts 
to make the nail resume its old regularity. You 
see the same thing in trees whose bark is cut, 
and in melons that have had only one summer's 
intimacy with squashes. The bad traits in char- 
acter are passed down from generation to genera- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 121 

tion with as much care as the good ones. 
Nature, unaided, never reforms anything. 

Mandeville. Is that the essence of Calvin- 
ism ? 

The Parson. Calvinism has n't any essence, 
— it 's a fact. 

Mandeville. When I was a boy, I always 
associated Calvinism and calomel together. I 
thought that homoeopathy — similia, etc. — had 
done away with both of them. 

Our Next Door {rising). If you are going 
into theology, I 'm off. 



IV. 



I fear we are not getting on much with the 
joyousness of winter. In order to be exhilarating 
it must be real winter. I have noticed that the 
lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely 
the north-wind rages, and the deeper the snow 
is the higher rise the spirits of the community. 
The activity of the " elements" has a great effect 
upon country folk especially ; and it is a more 



122 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

wholesome excitement than that caused by a 
great conflagration. The abatement of a snow- 
storm that grows to exceptional magnitude is 
regretted, for there is always the half-hope that 
this will be, since it has gone so far, the largest 
fall of snow ever known in the region, burying 
out of sight the great fall of 1808, the account 
of which is circumstantially and aggravatingly 
thrown in our way annually upon the least prov- 
ocation. We all know how it reads : " Some 
said it began at daylight, others that it set 
in after sunrise ; but all agree that by eight 
o'clock Friday morning it was snowing in heavy 
masses that darkened the air." 

The morning after we settled the five — or 
is it seven ? — points of Calvinism, there began 
a very hopeful snow-storm, one of those wide- 
sweeping, careering storms that may not much 
affect the city, but which strongly impress the 
country imagination with a sense of the personal 
qualities of the weather, — power, persistency, 
fierceness, and roaring exultation. Out-doors 
was terrible to those who looked out of windows, 
and heard the raging wind, and saw the commo- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 23 

A— , 

tion in all the high tree-tops and the writhing of 
the low evergreens, and could not summon reso- 
lution to go forth and breast and conquer the 
bluster. The sky was dark with snow, which 
was not permitted to fall peacefully like a blessed 
mantle, as it sometimes does, but was blown and 
rent and tossed like the split canvas of a ship in 
a gale. The world was taken possession of by 
the demons of the air, who had their will of it. 
There is a sort of fascination in such a scene, 
equal to that of a tempest at sea, and without its 
attendant haunting sense of peril ; there is no 
fear that the house will founder or dash against 
your neighbor's cottage, which is dimly seen 
anchored across the field ; at every thundering 
onset there is no fear that the cook's galley will 
upset, or the screw break loose and smash 
through the side, and we are not in momently 
expectation of the tinkling of the little bell to 
" stop her." The snow rises in drifting waves, 
and the naked trees bend like strained masts ; 
but so long as the window-blinds remain fast, and 
the chimney-tops do not go, we preserve an 
equal mind. Nothing more serious can happen 



124 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

than the failure of the butcher's and the grocer's 
carts, unless, indeed, the little news-carrier should 
fail to board us with the world's daily bulletin, 
or our next-door neighbor should be deterred 
from coming to sit by the blazing, excited fire, 
and interchange the trifling, harmless gossip of 
the day. The feeling of seclusion on such a day 
is sweet, but the true friend who does brave the 
storm and come is welcomed with a sort of 
enthusiasm that his arrival in pleasant weather 
would never excite. The snow-bound in their 
Arctic hulk are glad to see even a wandering 
Esquimau. 

On such a day I recall the great snow-storms 
on the northern New England hills, which lasted 
for a week with no cessation, with no sunrise or 
sunset, and no observation at noon ; and the sky 
all the while dark with the driving snow, and the 
whole world full of the noise of the rioting Boreal 
forces ; until the roads were obliterated, the fences 
covered, and the snow was piled solidly above the 
first-story windows of the farm-house on one 
side, and drifted before the front door so high 
that egress could only be had by tunnelling the 
bank. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 25 

After such a battle and siege, when the wind 
fell and the sun struggled out again, the pallid 
world lay subdued and tranquil, and the scattered 
dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by the 
tempest and half buried in sand. But when the 
blue sky again bent over all, the wide expanse of 
snow sparkled like diamond-fields, and the chim- 
ney signal-smokes could be seen, how beautiful 
was the picture ! Then began the stir abroad, 
and the efforts to open up communication 
through roads, or fields, or wherever paths 
could be broken, and the ways to the meeting- 
house first of all. Then from every house and 
hamlet the men turned out with shovels, with the 
patient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to 
break the roads, driving into the deepest drifts, 
shovelling and shouting as if the severe labor 
were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarity 
rising with the difficulties encountered ; and re- 
lief parties, meeting at length in the midst of the 
wide white desolation, hailed each other as chance 
explorers in new lands, and made the whole coun- 
try-side ring with the noise of their congratula- 
tions. There was as much excitement and healthy 



126 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

stirring of the blood in it as in the Fourth of July, 
and perhaps as much patriotism. The boy saw it 
in dumb show from the distant, low farm-house 
window, and wished he were a man. At night 
there were great stories of achievement told by 
the cavernous fireplace ; great latitude was per- 
mitted in the estimation of the size of particular 
drifts, but never any agreement was reached as 
to the " depth on a level." I have observed since 
that people are quite as apt to agree upon the 
marvellous and the exceptional as upon simple 
facts. 



By the firelight and the twilight, the Young 
Lady is finishing a letter to Herbert, — writing 
it, literally, on her knees, transforming thus the 
simple deed into an act of devotion. Mandeville 
says that it is bad for her eyes, but the sight of it 
is worse for his eyes. He begins to doubt the 
wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegm 
about absence conquering love. Memory has the 
singular characteristic of recalling in a friend 



BACKLOG STUDIES. \2J 

absent, as in a journey long past, only that which 
is agreeable. Mandeville begins to wish he were 
in New South Wales. 

I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's 
to the Young Lady, — obtained, I need not say, 
honorably, as private letters which get into print 
always are, — not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, 
but to show how the most unsentimental and 
cynical people are affected by the master passion. 
But I cannot bring myself to do it. Even in the 
interests of science one has no right to make 
an autopsy of two loving hearts, especially when 
they are suffering under a late attack of the one 
agreeable epidemic. All the world loves a lover, 
but it laughs at him none the less in his extrava- 
gances. He loses his accustomed reticence ; he 
has something of the martyr's willingness for pub- 
licity; he would even like to show the sincerity of 
his devotion by some piece of open heroism. Why 
should he conceal a discovery which has trans- 
formed the world to him, a secret which explains 
all the mysteries of nature and humanity ? He is 
in that ecstasy of mind which prompts those who 
were never orators before to rise in an experience- 



128 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

meeting and pour out a flood of feeling in the 
tritest language and the most conventional terms. 
I am not sure that Herbert, while in this glow, 
would be ashamed of his letter in print, but this 
is one of the cases where chancery would step in 
and protect one from himself by his next friend. 
This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps it is 
brutal to allude to it at all. 

In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting 
in print. Love has a marvellous power of vivify- 
ing language and charging the simplest words 
with the most tender meaning, of restoring to 
them the power they had when first coined. They 
are words of fire to those two who know their 
secret, but not to others. It is generally admit- 
ted that the best love-letters would not make very 
good literature. " Dearest," begins Herbert, in a 
burst of originality, felicitously selecting a word 
whose exclusiveness shuts out all the world but 
one, and which is a whole letter, poem, confes- 
sion, and creed in one breath. What a weight 
of meaning it has to carry ! There may be 
beauty and wit and grace and naturalness and 
even the splendor of fortune elsewhere, but there 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 129 

is one woman in the world whose sweet presence 
would be compensation for the loss of all else. It 
is not to be reasoned about ; he wants that one ; 
it is her plume dancing down the sunny street 
that sets his heart beating ; he knows her form 
among a thousand, and follows her ; he longs to 
run after her carriage, which the cruel coachman 
whirls out of his sight. It is marvellous to him 
that all the world does not want her too, and he 
is in a panic when he thinks of it. And what 
exquisite flattery is in that little word addressed 
to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph 
she repeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not 
altogether pity for those who still stand and wait. 
To be chosen out of all the available world — it 
is almost as much bliss as it is to choose. "All 
that long, long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage 
I thought of you every moment, and wondered 
what you were doing and how' you were looking 
just that moment, and I found the occupation so 
charming that I was almost sorry when the jour- 
ney was ended." Not much in that ! But I have 
no doubt the Young Lady read it over and over, 
and dwelt also upon every moment, and found in 



130 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

it new proof of unshaken constancy, and had in 
that and the like things in the letter a sense of 
the sweetest communion. There is nothing in 
this letter that we need dwell on it, but I am 
convinced that the mail does not carry any other 
letters so valuable as this sort. 

I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in 
this new light unconsciously gave tone a little to 
the evening's talk ; not that anybody mentioned 
him, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing 
from the qualities that make one person admired 
by another to those that win the love of man- 
kind. 

Mandeville. There seems to be something 
in some persons that wins them liking, special or 
general, independent almost of what they do or 
say. 

The Mistress. Why, everybody is liked by 
some one. 

Mandeville. I 'm not sure of that. There 
are those who are friendless, and would be if 
they had endless acquaintances. But, to take 
the case away from ordinary examples, in which 
habit and a thousand circumstances influence 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 131 

liking, what is it that determines the world upon 
a personal regard for authors whom it has never 
seen ? 

The Fire-Tender. Probably it is the spirit 
shown in their writings. 

The Mistress. More likely it is a sort of tra- 
dition ; I don't believe that the world has a feel- 
ing of personal regard for any author who was 
not loved by those who knew him most inti- 
mately. 

The Fire-Tender. Which comes to the same 
thing. The qualities, the spirit, that got him the 
love of his acquaintances he put into his books. 

Mandeville. That does n't seem to me suf- 
ficient. Shakespeare has put everything into 
his plays and poems, swept the whole range of 
human sympathies and passions, and at times is 
inspired by the sweetest spirit that ever man 
had. 

The Young Lady. No one has better inter- 
preted love. 

Mandeville. Yet I apprehend that no per- 
son living has any personal regard for Shake- 
speare, or that his personality affects many, — - 



132 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

except they stand in Stratford church and feel a 
sort of awe at the thought that the bones of the 
greatest poet are so near them. 

The Parson. I don't think the world cares 
personally for any mere man or woman dead for 
centuries. 

Mandeville. But there is a difference. I 
think there is still rather a warm feeling for 
Socrates the man, independent of what he said, 
which is little known. Homer's works are cer- 
tainly better known, but no one cares person- 
ally for Homer any more than for any other 
shade. 

Our Next Door. Why not go back to Moses ? 
We 've got the evening before us for digging up 
people. 

Mandeville. Moses is a very good illustra- 
tion. No name of antiquity is better known, 
and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same 
kind of popular liking that Socrates does. 

Our Next Door. Fudge ! You just get up 
in any lecture assembly and propose three cheers 
for Socrates, and see where you '11 be. Mande- 
ville ought to be a missionary, and read Robert 
Browning to the Fijis. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 33 

The Fire-Tender. How do you account for 
the alleged personal regard for Socrates ? 

The Parson. Because the world called Chris- 
tian is still more than half heathen. 

Mandeville. He was a plain man ; his sym- 
pathies were with the people ; he had what is 
roughly known as "horse-sense," and he was 
homely. Franklin and Abraham Lincoln be- 
long to his class. They were all philosophers 
of the shrewd sort, and they all had humor. 
It was fortunate for Lincoln that, with his 
other qualities, he was homely. That was the 
last touching recommendation to the popular 
heart. 

The Mistress. Do you remember that ugly 
brown-stone statue of St. Antonino by the bridge 
in Sorrento ? He must have been a coarse saint, 
patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any 
one anywhere, or the homely stone image of one, 
so loved by the people. 

Our Next Door. Ugliness being trump, I 
wonder more people don't win. Mandeville, why 
don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and 
put up his statue in the Central Park ? It would 



134 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

make that one of Lincoln in Union Square look 
beautiful. 

The Parson. O, you '11 see that some day, 
when they have a museum there illustrating the 
" Science of Religion." 

The Fire-Tender. Doubtless, to go back to 
what we were talking of, the world has a fond- 
ness for some authors, and thinks of them with 
an affectionate and half-pitying familiarity ; and 
it may be that this grows out of something in 
their lives quite as much as anything in their 
writings. There seems to be more disposition 
of personal liking to Thackeray than to Dickens, 
now both are dead, — a result that would hardly 
have been predicted when the world was cry- 
ing over Little Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky 
Sharp. 

The Young Lady. What was that you were 
telling about Charles Lamb, the other day, Man- 
deville ? Is not the popular liking for him some- 
what independent of his writings ? 

Mandeville. He is a striking example of an 
author who is loved. Very likely the remem- 
brance of his tribulations has still something to 



BACKLOG STUDIES.' 1 35 

do with the tenderness felt for him. He sup- 
ported no dignity, and permitted a familiarity 
which indicated no self-appreciation of his real 
rank in the world of letters. I have heard that 
his acquaintances familiarly called him " Charley." 

Our Next Door. It 's a relief to know that ! 
Do you happen to know what Socrates was 
called ? 

Mandeville. I have seen people who knew 
Lamb very well. One of them told me, as illus- 
trating his want of dignity, that as he was going 
home late one night through the nearly empty 
streets, he was met by a roystering party who 
were making a night of it from tavern to tavern. 
They fell upon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure 
and hesitating manner, and, hoisting him on their 
shoulders, carried him off, singing as they went. 
Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell them 
who he was. When they were tired of lugging 
him, they lifted him, with much effort and diffi- 
culty, to the top of a high wall, and left him there 
amid the broken bottles, utterly unable to get 
down. Lamb remained there philosophically in 
the enjoyment of his novel adventure, until a 



136 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



passing watchman rescued him from his ridicu- 
lous situation. 

The Fire-Tender. How did the story get 
out? 

Mandeville. O, Lamb told all about it next 
morning; and when asked afterwards why he did 
so, he replied that there was no fun in it unless 
he told it. 





HE King sat in the winter-house in 
the ninth month, and there was a 

V'^^ ^ ^ re on t ^ ie neartn burning before 

him When Jehudi had read three or 

four leaves he cut it with the penknife. 

That seems to be a pleasant and home-like 
picture from a not very remote period, — less 
than twenty-five hundred years ago, and many 
centuries after the fall of Troy. And that was 
not so very long ago, for Thebes, in the splendid 
streets of which Homer wandered and sang to 
the kings when Memphis, whose ruins are older 
than history, was its younger rival, was twelve 
centuries old when Paris ran away with Helen. 

I am sorry that the original — and you can 



138 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

usually do anything with the "original" — does 
not bear me out in saying that it was a pleasant 
picture. I should like to believe that Jehoiakim 
— for that was the singular name of the gentle- 
man who sat by his hearthstone — had just re- 
ceived the Memphis " Palimpsest," fifteen days in 
advance of the date of its publication, and that 
his secretary was reading to him that monthly, 
and cutting its leaves as he read. I should like 
to have seen it in that year when Thales was 
learning astronomy in Memphis, and Necho was 
organizing his campaign against Carchemish. If 
Jehoiakim took the " Attic Quarterly," he might 
have read its comments on the banishment of the 
Alcmaeonidae, and its gibes at Solon for his pro- 
hibitory laws, forbidding the sale of unguents, 
limiting the luxury of dress, and interfering with 
the sacred rights of mourners to passionately 
bewail the dead in the Asiatic manner ; the same 
number being enriched with contributions from 
two rising poets, — a lyric of love by Sappho, 
and an ode sent by Anacreon from Teos, with 
an editorial note explaining that the Maga was 
not responsible for the sentiments of the poem. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



139 



But, in fact, the gentleman who sat before the 
backlog in his winter-house had other things to 
think of. For Nebuchadnezzar was coming that 
way with the chariots and horses of Babylon and 
a great crowd of marauders ; and the king had 
not even the poor choice whether he would be 
the vassal of the Chaldean or of the Egyptian. 
To us, this is only a ghostly show of monarchs 
and conquerors stalking across vast historic 
spaces. It was no doubt a vulgar enough scene 
of war and plunder. The great captains of that 
age went about to harry each other's territories 
and spoil each other's cities very much as we do 
nowadays, and for similar reasons ; — Napoleon 
the Great in Moscow, Napoleon the Small in 
Italy, Kaiser William in Paris, Great Scott in 
Mexico ! Men have not changed much. 

— The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-garden in 
the third month ; there was a fire on the hearth 
burning before him. He cut the leaves of " Scrib- 
ner's Monthly" with his penknife, and thought of 
Jehoiakim. 

That seems as real as the other. In the gar- 
den, which is a room of the house, the tall callas, 



140 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

rooted in the ground, stand about the fountain ; 
the sun, streaming through the glass, illumines 
the many-hued flowers. I wonder what Jehoia- 
kim did with the mealy-bug on his passion-vine, 
and if he had any way of removing the scale-bug 
from his African acacia ? One would like to 
know, too, how he treated the red-spider on the 
Le Marque rose. The record is silent. I do 
not doubt he had all these insects in his winter- 
garden, and the aphidse besides ; and he could 
not smoke them out with tobacco, for the world 
had not yet fallen into its second stage of the 
knowledge of good and evil by eating the for- 
bidden tobacco-plant. 

I confess that this little picture of a fire on the 
hearth so many centuries ago helps to make real 
and interesting to me that somewhat misty past. 
No doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the 
Nile grew in that winter-house, and perhaps Je- 
hoiakim attempted — the most difficult thing in 
the world — the cultivation of the wild-flowers 
from Lebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim was interested 
also, as I am through this ancient fireplace, — ■ 
which is a sort of domestic window into the an 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 141 

cient world, — in the loves of Bernice and Abaces 
at the court of the Pharaohs. I see that it is the 
same thing as the sentiment — perhaps it is the 
shrinking which every soul that is a soul has, 
sooner or later, from isolation — which grew up 
between Herbert and the Young Lady Staying 
With Us. Jeremiah used to come in to that fire- 
side very much as the Parson does to ours. The 
Parson, to be sure, never prophesies, but he grum- 
bles, and is the chorus in the play that sings the 
everlasting ai ai of " I told you so ! " Yet we like 
the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herb that 
makes the pottage wholesome. I should rather, 
ten times over, dispense with the flatterers and 
the smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But the 
grumblers are of two sorts, — the healthful-toned 
and the whiners. There are makers of beer who 
substitute for the clean bitter of the hops some 
deleterious drug, and then seek to hide the fraud 
by some cloying sweet. There is nothing of this 
sickish drug in The Parson's talk, nor was there 
in that of Jeremiah. I sometimes think there is 
scarcely enough of this wholesome tonic in mod- 
ern society. The Parson says he never would 



142 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

give a child sugar-coated pills. Mandeville says 
he never would give them any. After all, you 
cannot help liking Mandeville. 



II. 

We were talking of this late news from Jeru- 
salem. The Fire-Tender was saying that it is 
astonishing how much is telegraphed us from the 
East that is not half so interesting. He was at a 
loss philosophically to account for the fact that the 
world is so eager to know the news of yesterday 
which is unimportant, and so indifferent to that 
of the day before which is of some moment. 

Mandeville. I suspect that it arises from the 
want of imagination. People need to touch the 
facts, and nearness in time is contiguity. It 
would excite no interest to bulletin the last siege 
of Jerusalem in a village where the event was 
unknown, if the date was appended ; and yet the 
account of it is incomparably more exciting than 
that of the siege of Metz. 

Our Next Door. The daily news is a neces- 
sity. I cannot get along without my morning 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 143 

paper. The other morning I took it up, and was 
absorbed in the telegraphic columns for an hour 
nearly. I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of 
immediate contact with all the world of yester- 
day, until I read among the minor items that 
Patrick Donahue, of the city of New York, died 
of a sunstroke. If he had frozen to death, I 
should have enjoyed that; but to die of sun- 
stroke in February seemed inappropriate, and I 
turned to the date of the paper. When I found 
it was printed in July, I need not say that I lost 
all interest in it, though why the trivialities and 
crimes and accidents, relating to people I never 
knew, were not as good six months after date as 
twelve hours, I cannot say. 

The Fire-Tender. You know that in Con- 
cord the latest news, except a remark or two by 
Thoreau or Emerson, is the Vedas. I believe 
the Rig- Veda is read at the breakfast-table in- 
stead of the Boston journals. 

The Parson. I know it is read afterward in- 
stead of the Bible. 

Mandeville. That is only because it is sup- 
posed to be older. I have understood that the 



144 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Bible is very well spoken of there, but it is not 
antiquated enough to be an authority. 

Our Next Door. There was a project on 
foot to put it into the circulating library, but 
the title New in the second part was considered 
objectionable. 

Herbert. Well, I have a good deal of sym« 
pathy with Concord as to the news. We are fed 
on a daily diet of trivial events and gossip, of 
the unfruitful sayings of thoughtless men and 
women, until our mental digestion is seriously 
impaired ; the day will come when no one will 
be able to sit down to a thoughtful, well-wrought 
book and assimilate its contents. 

The Mistress. I doubt if a daily newspa- 
per is a necessity, in the higher sense of the 
word. 

The Parson. Nobody supposes it is to wo- 
men, — that is, if they can see each other. 

The Mistress. Don't interrupt, unless you 
have something to say ; though I should like to 
know how much gossip there is afloat that the 
minister does not know. The newspaper may 
be needed in society, but how quickly it drops 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 45 

out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds 
of what is called civilization. You remember 
when we were in the depths of the woods last 
summer how difficult it was to get up any inter- 
est in the files of late papers that reached us, 
and how unreal all the struggle and turmoil of 
the world seemed. We stood apart, and could 
estimate things at their true value. 

The Young Lady. Yes, that was real life. 
I never tired of the guide's stories ; there was 
some interest in the intelligence that a deer had 
been down to eat the lily-pads at the foot of the 
lake the night before ; that a bear's track was 
seen on the trail we crossed that day ; even 
Mandeville's fish-stories had a certain air of 
probability ; and how to roast a trout in the 
ashes and serve him hot and juicy and clean, 
and how to cook soup and prepare coffee and 
heat dish-water in one tin-pail, were vital prob- 
lems. 

The Parson. You would have had no such 
problems at home. Why will people go so far 
to put themselves to such inconvenience ? I hate 
the woods. Isolation breeds conceit ; there are 



I46 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

no people so conceited as those who dwell in 
remote wildernesses and live mostly alone. 

The Young Lady. For my part, I feel hum- 
ble in the presence of mountains, and in the vast 
stretches of the wilderness. 

The Parson. I '11 be bound a woman would 
feel just as nobody would expect her to feel, 
under given circumstances. 

Mandeville. I think the reason why the 
newspaper and the world it carries take no hold 
of us in the wilderness is that we become a kind 
of vegetable ourselves when we go there. I 
have often attempted to improve my mind in 
the woods with good solid books. You might 
as well offer a bunch of celery to an oyster. 
The mind goes to sleep : the senses and the 
instincts wake up. The best I can do when it 
rains, or the trout won't bite, is to read Dumas's 
novels. Their ingenuity will almost keep a man 
awake after supper, by the camp-fire. And there 
is a kind of unity about them that I like ; the 
history is as good as the morality. 

Our Next Door. I always wondered where 
Mandeville got his historical facts. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 147 

The Mistress. Mandeville misrepresents 
himself in the woods. I heard him one night 
repeat " The Vision of Sir Launfal " — 

(The Fire-Tender. Which comes very near 
being our best poem.) 

— as we were crossing the lake, and the guides 
became so absorbed in it that they forgot to 
paddle, and sat listening with open mouths, as 
if it had been a panther story. 

The Parson. Mandeville likes to show off 
well enough. I heard that he related to a 
woods' boy up there the whole of the Siege of 
Troy. The boy was very much interested, and 
said " there 'd been a man up there that spring 
from Troy, looking up timber." Mandeville al- 
ways carries the news when he goes into the 
country. 

Mandeville. I 'm going to take the Par- 
son's sermon on Jonah next summer ; it 's the 
nearest to anything like news we 've had from 
his pulpit in ten years. But, seriously, the boy 
was very well informed. He 'd heard of Albany ; 
his father took in the Weekly Tribune, and he 
had a partial conception of Horace Greeley. 



148 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Our Next Door. I never went so far out of 
the world in America yet that the name of Hor- 
ace Greeley did n't rise up before me. One of 
the first questions asked by any camp-fire is, 
" Did ye ever see Horace ? " 

Herbert. Which shows the power of the 
press again. But I have often remarked how 
little real conception of the moving world, as it 
is, people in remote regions get from the news- 
paper. It needs to be read in the midst of 
events. A chip cast ashore in a refluent eddy 
tells no tale of the force and swiftness of the 
current. 

Our Next Door. I don't exactly get the 
drift of that last remark ; but I rather like a 
remark that I can't understand ; like the land- 
lady's indigestible bread, it stays by you. 

Herbert. I see that I must talk in words -of 
one syllable. The newspaper has little effect 
upon the remote country mind, because the re- 
mote country mind is interested in a very limited 
number of things. Besides, as the Parson says, 
it is conceited. The most accomplished scholar 
will be the butt of all the guides in the woods, 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 49 

because he cannot follow a trail that would puz- 
zle a sable (saple the trappers call it). 

The Parson. It's enough to read the sum- 
mer letters that people write to the newspapers 
from the country and the woods. Isolated from 
the activity of the world, they come to think 
that the little adventures of their stupid days 
and nights are important. Talk about that 
being real life ! Compare the letters such peo- 
ple write with the other contents of the news- 
paper, and you will see which life is real. That 's 
one reason I hate to have summer come, the 
country letters set in. 

The Mistress. I should like to see some- 
thing the Parson doesn't hate to have come. 

Mandeville. Except his quarter's salary, 
and the meeting of the American Board. 

The Fire-Tender. I don't see that we are 
getting any nearer the solution of the original 
question. The world is evidently interested in 
events simply because they are recent. 

Our Next Door. I have a theory that a 
newspaper might be published at little cost, 
merely by reprinting the numbers of years be- 



150 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

fore, only altering the dates ; just as the Parson 
preaches over his sermons. 

The Fire-Tender. It 's evident we must 
have a higher order of news-gatherers. It has 
come to this, that the newspaper furnishes 
thought-material for all the world, actually pre- 
scribes from day to day the themes the world 
shall think on and talk about. The occupation 
of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most 
important. When you think of it, it is aston- 
ishing that this department should not be in. the 
hands of the ablest men, accomplished scholars, 
philosophical observers, discriminating selectors 
of the news of the world that is worth thinking 
over and talking about. The editorial com- 
ments frequently are able enough, but is it 
worth while keeping an expensive mill going to 
grind cl iff? I sometimes wonder, as I open my 
morning paper, if nothing did happen in the 
twenty-four hours except crimes, accidents, defal- 
cations, deaths of unknown loafers, robberies, 
monstrous births, — say about the level of po- 
lice-court news. 

Our Next Door. I have even noticed that 



BA CKL O G STUDIES. 1 5 I 

murders have deteriorated ; they are not so high- 
toned and mysterious as they used to be. 

The Fire-Tender. It is true that the news- 
papers have improved vastly within the last 
decade. 

Herbert. I think, for one, that they are 
very much above the level of the ordinary gos- 
sip of the country. 

The Fire-Tender. But I am tired of having 
the under-world still occupy so much room in 
the newspapers. The reporters are rather more 
alert for a dog-fight than a philological conven- 
tion. It must be that the good deeds of the 
world outnumber the bad in any given day ; 
and what a good reflex action it would have 
on society if they could be more fully re- 
ported than the bad ! I suppose the Parson 
would call this the Enthusiasm of Humanity . 

The Parson. You '11 see how far you can 
lift yourself up by your boot-straps. 

Herbert. I wonder what influence on the 
quality (I say nothing of quantity) of news the 
coming of women into the reporter's and editor's 
work will have. 



152 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Our Next Door. There are the baby-shows ; 
they make cheerful reading. 

The Mistress. All of them got up by specu- 
lating men, who impose upon the vanity of weak 
women. 

Herbert. I think women reporters are more 
given to personal details and gossip than the 
men. When I read the Washington correspond- 
ence I am proud of my country, to see how 
many Apollo Belvederes, Adonises, how much 
marble brow and piercing eye and hyacinthine 
locks, we have in the two houses of Con- 
gress. 

The Young Lady. That 's simply because 
women understand the personal weakness of 
men ; they have a long score of personal flat- 
tery to pay off too. 

Mandeville. I think women will bring in el- 
ements of brightness, picturesqueness, and purity 
very much needed. Women have a power of 
investing simple ordinary things with a charm ; 
men are bungling narrators compared with them. 

The Parson. The mistake they make is in 
trying to write, and especially to " stump-speak," 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 53 

like men ; next to an effeminate man there is 
nothing so disagreeable as a manish woman. 

Herbert. I heard one once address a legisla- 
tive committee. The knowing air, the familiar, 
jocular, smart manner, the nodding and winking 
innuendoes, supposed to be those of a man " up to 
snuff," and au fait in political wiles, were inex- 
pressibly comical. And yet the exhibition was 
pathetic, for it had the suggestive vulgarity of a 
woman in man's clothes. The imitation is always 
a dreary failure. 

The Mistress. Such women are the rare 
exceptions. I am ready to defend my sex ; 
but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in 
one. 

The Fire-Tender. I have great hope that 
women will bring into the newspaper an elevating 
influence ; the common and sweet life of society 
is much better fitted to entertain and instruct us 
than the exceptional and extravagant. I confess 
(saving the Mistress's presence) that the evening 
talk over the dessert at dinner is much more 
entertaining and piquant than the morning paper, 
and often as important. 



154 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

The Mistress. I think the subject had bet- 
ter be changed. 

Mandeville. The person, not the subject. 
There is no entertainment so full of quiet pleas- 
ure as the hearing a lady of cultivation and 
refinement relate her day's experience in her 
daily rounds of calls, charitable visits, shop- 
ping, errands of relief and condolence. The 
evening budget is better than the finance min- 
ister's. 

Our Next Door. That 's even so. My wife 
will pick up more news in six hours than I can 
get in a week, and I 'm fond of news. 

Mandeville. I don't mean gossip, by any 
means, or scandal. A woman of culture skims 
over that like a bird, never touching it with the 
tip of a wing. What she brings home is the 
freshness and brightness of life. She touches 
everything so daintily, she hits off a character in 
a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue with- 
out tediousness, she mimics without vulgarity ; 
her narration sparkles, but it does n't sting. The 
picture of her day is full of vivacity, and it gives 
new value and freshness to common things. If 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 55 

we could only have on the stage such actresses 
as we have in the drawing-room ! 

The Fire-Tender. We want something more 
of this grace, sprightliness, and harmless play of 
the finer life of society in the newspaper. 

Our Next Door. I wonder Mandeville 
does n't marry, and become a permanent sub- 
scriber to his embodied idea of a newspaper. 

The Young Lady. Perhaps he does not rel- 
ish the idea of being unable to stop his subscrip- 
tion. 

Our Next Door. Parson, won't you please 
punch that fire, and give us more blaze ? we are 
getting into the darkness of socialism. 



III. 

Herbert returned to us in March. The Young 
Lady was spending the winter with us, and March, 
in spite of the calendar, turned out to be a winter 
month. It usually is in New England, and April 
too, for that matter. And I cannot say it is 
unfortunate for us. There are so many topics to 
be turned over and settled at our fireside that a 



156 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

winter of ordinary length would make little 
impression on the list. The fireside is, after all, 
a sort of private court of chancery, where noth- 
ing ever does come to a final decision. The 
chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen 
one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows 
exactly what he does believe until he is warmed 
into conviction by the heat of attack and defence. 
A man left to himself drifts about like a boat on 
a calm lake ; it is only when the wind blows that 
the boat goes anywhere. 

Herbert said he had been dipping into the 
recent novels written by women, here and there, 
with a view to noting the effect upon literature 
of this sudden and rather overwhelming acces- 
sion to it. There was a good deal of talk about 
\t evening after evening, off and on, and I can 
only undertake to set down fragments of it. 

Herbert. I should say that the distinguish- 
ing feature of the literature of this day is the 
prominence women have in its production. They 
figure in most of the magazines, though very 
rarely in the scholarly and critical reviews, and 
in thousands of newspapers ; to them we are 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 57 

indebted for the oceans of Sunday-school books, 
and they write the majority of the novels, the 
serial stories, and they mainly pour out the 
watery flood of tales in the weekly papers. 
Whether this is to result in more good than evil 
it is impossible yet to say, and perhaps it would 
be unjust to say, until this generation has worked 
off its froth, and women settle down to artistic, 
conscientious labor in literature. 

The Mistress. You don't mean to say that 
George Eliot, and Mrs. Gaskell, and George 
Sand, and Mrs. Browning, before her marriage 
and severe attack of spiritism, are less true to art 
than contemporary men novelists and poets. 

Herbert. You name some exceptions that 
show the bright side of the picture, not only for 
the present, but for the future. Perhaps genius has 
no sex ; but ordinary talent has. I refer to the 
great body of novels, which you would know by 
internal evidence were written by women. They 
are of two sorts : the domestic story, entirely un- 
idealized, and as flavorless as water-gruel ; and the 
spiced novel, generally immoral in tendency, in 
which the social problems are handled, unhappy 



158 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

marriages, affinity and passional attraction, bigamy, 
and the violation of the seventh commandment. 
These subjects are treated in the rawest manner, 
without any settled ethics, with little discrimina- 
tion of eternal right and wrong, and with very 
little sense of responsibility for what is set forth. 
Many of these novels are merely the blind out- 
bursts of a nature impatient of restraint and the 
conventionalities of society, and are as chaotic as 
the untrained minds that produce them. 

Mandeville. Don't you think these novels 
fairly represent a social condition of unrest and 
upheaval ? 

Herbert. Very likely ; and they help to cre- 
ate and spread abroad the discontent they de- 
scribe. Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised 
by divorce), of unhappy marriages, where the 
injured wife, through an entire volume, is on the 
brink of falling into the arms of a sneaking lover, 
until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the 
two souls, who were born for each other, but got 
separated in the cradle, melt and mingle into one 
in the last chapter, are not healthful reading for 
maids or mothers. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 59 

The Mistress. Or men. 

The Fire-Tender. The most disagreeable 
object to me in modern literature is the man 
the women novelists have introduced as the lead- 
ing character; the women who come in contact 
with him seem to be fascinated by his disdainful 
mien, his giant strength, and his brutal manner. 
He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, 
yet as lithe as a cat ; has an ugly scar across his 
right cheek ; has been in the four quarters of the 
globe ; knows seventeen languages ; had a harem 
in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas ; can 
be as polished as Bayard in the drawing-room, 
but is as gloomy as Conrad in the library ; has a 
terrible eye and a withering glance, but can be 
instantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is 
not his wife's ; and through all his morose and 
vicious career has carried a heart as purfc, as 
a violet. 

The Mistress. Don't you think the Count 
of Monte Cristo is the elder brother of Ro- 
chester ? 

The Fire-Tender. One is a mere hero oi 
romance ; the other is meant for a real man. 



l60 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Mandeville. I don't see that the men novel- 
writers are better than the women. 

Herbert. That 's not the question ; but what 
are women who write so large a proportion of the 
current stories bringing into literature ? Aside 
from the question of morals, and the absolutely 
demoralizing manner of treating social questions, 
most of their stories are vapid and weak beyond 
expression, and are slovenly in composition, show- 
ing neither study, training, nor mental discipline. 

The Mistress. Considering that women have 
been shut out from the training of the universi- 
ties, and have few opportunities for the wide 
observation that men enjoy, is n't it pretty well 
that the foremost living writers of fiction are 
women ? 

Herbert. You can say that for the moment, 
since Thackeray and Dickens have just died. 
But it does not affect the general estimate. We 
are inundated with a flood of weak writing. 
Take the Sunday-school literature, largely the 
product of women ; it has n't as much character 
as a dried apple pie. I don't know what we are 
coming to if the presses keep on running. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. i6l 

Our Next Door. We are living, we are 
dwelling, in a grand and awful time ; I 'm glad 
I don't write novels. 

The Parson. So am I. 

Our Next Door. I tried a Sunday-school 
book once ; but I made the good boy end in the 
poor-house, and the bad boy go to Congress ; and 
the publisher said it would n't do, the public 
would n't stand that sort of thing. Nobody but 
the good go to Congress. 

The Mistress. Herbert, what do you think 
women are good for ? 

Our Next Door. That 's a poser. 

Herbert. Well, I think they are in a ten- 
tative state as to literature, and we cannot yet 
tell what they will do. Some of our most bril- 
liant books of travel, correspondence, and writ- 
ing on topics in which their sympathies have 
warmly interested them, are by women. Some 
of them are also strong writers in the daily jour- 
nals. 

Mandeville. I 'm not sure there 's anything 
a woman cannot do as well as a man, if she sets 
her heart on it. 



1 62 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

The Parson. That 's because she 's no con' 
science. 

Chorus. O Parson ! * 

The Parson. Well, it does n't trouble her, if 
she wants to do anything. She looks at the end, 
not the means. A woman, set on anything, will 
walk right through the moral crockery without 
wincing. She 'd be a great deal more unscrupu- 
lous in politics than the average man. Did you 
ever see a female lobbyist ? Or a criminal ? It 
is Lady Macbeth who does not falter. Don't 
raise your hands at me ! The sweetest angel or 
the coolest devil is a woman. I see in some of 
the modern novels we have been talking of the 
same unscrupulous daring, a blindness to moral 
distinctions, a constant exaltation of a passion into 
a virtue, an entire disregard of the immutable 
laws on which the family and society rest. And 
you ask lawyers and trustees how scrupulous 
women are in business transactions ! 

The Fire-Tender. Women are often igno- 
rant of affairs, and, besides, they may have a 
notion often that a woman ought to be privileged 
more than a man in business matters ; but I tell 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 163 

you, as a rule, that if men would consult their 
wives, they would go a deal straighter in business 
operations than they do go. 

The Parson. We are all poor sinners. But 
I Ve another indictment against the women writ- 
ers. We get no good old-fashioned love-stories 
from them. It 's either a quarrel of discordant 
natures — one a panther, and the other a polar 
bear — for courtship, until one of them is crippled 
by a railway accident ; or a long wrangle of mar- 
ried life between two unpleasant people, who can 
neither live comfortably together nor apart. I 
suppose, by what I see, that sweet wooing, with 
all its torturing and delightful uncertainty, still 
goes on in the world ; and I have no doubt that 
the majority of married people live more happily 
than the unmarried. But it 's easier to find a 
dodo than a new and good love-story. 

Mandeville. I suppose the old style of plot 
is exhausted. Everything in man and outside of 
him has been turned over so often that I should 
think the novelists would cease simply from want 
of material. 

The Parson. Plots are no more exhausted 



1 64 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

than men are. Every man is a new creation, and 
combinations are simply endless. Even if we 
did not have new material in the daily change of 
society, and there were only a fixed number of 
incidents and characters in life, invention could 
not be exhausted on them. I amuse myself some- 
times with my kaleidoscope, but I can never 
reproduce a figure. No, no. I cannot say that 
you may not exhaust everything else : we may 
get all the secrets of a nature into a book by and 
by, but the novel is immortal, for it deals with 
men. 

The Parson's vehemence came very near carry- 
ing him into a sermon ; and as nobody has the 
privilege of replying to his sermons, so none of 
the circle made any reply now. 

Our Next Door mumbled something about his 
hair standing on end, to hear a minister defend- 
ing the novel ; but it did not interrupt the gen- 
eral silence. Silence is unnoticed when people 
sit before a fire ; it would be intolerable if they 
sat and looked at each other. 

The wind had risen during the evening, and 
Mandeville remarked, as they rose to go, that it 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



I6 5 



had a spring sound in it, but it was as cold as 
winter. The Mistress said she heard a bird that 
morning singing in the sun ; it was a winter 
bird, but it sang a spring song. 




%> * -*> 



r&^£^to2£&_ 




!E have been much interested in what 
is called the Gothic revival. We 
have spent I don't know how many 
evenings in looking over Herbert's plans for a 
cottage, and have been amused with his vain 
efforts to cover with Gothic roofs the vast num- 
ber of large rooms which the Young Lady draws 
in her sketch of a small house. 

I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is capa- 
ble of infinite modification, so that every house 
built in that style may be as different from every 
other house as one tree is from every other, can 
be adapted to our modern uses, and will be, when 
artists catch its spirit instead of merely copying 
its old forms. But just now we are taking the 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 67 

Gothic very literally, as we took the Greek at 
one time> or as we should probably have taken 
the Saracenic, if the Moors had not been colored. 
Not even the cholera is so contagious in this 
country as a style of architecture which we hap- 
pen to catch ; the country is just now broken out 
all over with the Mansard-roof epidemic. 

And in secular architecture we do not study 
what is adapted to our climate any more than in 
ecclesiastic architecture we adopt that which is 
suited to our religion. 

We are building a great many costly churches 
here and there, we Protestants, and as the most 
of them are ill adapted to our forms of worship, 
it may be necessary and best for us to change 
our religion in order to save our investments. I 
am aware that this would be a grave step, and we 
should not hasten to throw overboard Luther and 
the right of private judgment without reflection. 
And yet, if it is necessary to revive the ecclesi- 
astical Gothic architecture, not in its spirit (that 
we nowhere do), but in the form which served 
another age and another faith, and if, as it ap- 
pears, we have already a great deal of money 



1 68 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

invested in this reproduction, it may be more 
prudent to go forward than to go back. The 
question is, "Cannot one easier change his creed 
than his pew ? " 

I occupy a seat in church which is an admira- 
ble one for reflection, but I cannot see or hear 
much that is going on in what we like to call the 
apse. There is a splendid stone pillar, a clus- 
tered column, right in front of me, and I am as 
much protected from the minister as Old Put's 
troops were from the British, behind the stone 
wall at Bunker's Hill. I can hear his voice occa- 
sionally wandering round in the arches overhead, 
and I recognize the tone, because he is a friend 
of mine and an excellent man, but what he is say- 
ing I can very seldom make out. If there was any 
incense burning I could smell it, and that would 
be something. I rather like the smell of incense, 
and it has its holy associations. But there is 
no smell in our church, except of bad air, — for 
there is no provision for ventilation in the splen- 
did and costly edifice. The reproduction of the 
old Gothic is so complete that the builders even 
seem to have brought over the ancient air from 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 169 

one of the churches of the Middle Ages, — you 
would declare it had n't been changed in two 
centuries. 

I am expected to fix my attention during the 
service upon one man, who stands in the centre 
of the apse and has a sounding-board behind 
him in order to throw his voice out of the sacred 
semicircular space (where the altar used to stand, 
but now the sounding-board takes the place of 
the altar) and scatter it over the congregation at 
large, and send it echoing up in the groined roof. 
I always like to hear a minister who is unfamiliar 
with the house, and who has a loud voice, try to 
fill the edifice. The more he roars and gives 
himself with vehemence to the effort, the more 
the building roars in indistinguishable noise and 
hubbub. By the time he has said (to suppose a 
case), " The Lord is in his holy temple," and has 
passed on to say, " let all the earth keep silence," 
the building is repeating " The Lord is in his 
holy temple " from half a dozen different angles 
and altitudes, rolling it and growling it, and is 
not keeping silence at all. A man who under- 
stands it waits until the house has had its say, 



170 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

and has digested one passage, before he launches 
another into the vast, echoing spaces. I am 
expected, as I said, to fix my eye and mind on 
the minister, the central point of the service. 
But the pillar hides him. Now if there were sev- 
eral ministers in the church, dressed in such gor- 
geous colors that I could see them at the distance 
from the apse in which my limited income com- 
pels me to sit, and candles were burning, and 
censers were swinging, and the platform was 
full of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous ritual 
worship, and a bell rang to tell me the holy 
moments, I should not mind the pillar at all. I 
should sit there, like any other Goth, and enjoy 
it. But, as I have said, the pastor is a friend of 
mine, and I like to look at him on Sunday, and 
hear wliat he says, for he always says something 
worth hearing. I am on such terms with him, 
indeed we all are, that it would be pleasant to 
have the service of a little more social nature, 
and more human. When we put him away off 
in the apse, and set him up for a Goth, and 
then seat ourselves at a distance, scattered about 
among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me 



BACKLOG [STUDIES. iji 
__ 1 ^ 

a trifle unnatural!* 1 hough I do not mean to 
say that the congregations do not "enjoy their 
religion" in their splendid edifices which cost so 
much money and are really so beautiful. 

A good many people have the idea, so it 
seems, that Gothic architecture and Christianity 
are essentially one and the same thing. Just as 
many regard it as an act of piety to work an 
altar cloth or to cushion a pulpit. It may be, 
and it may not be. 

Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a 
valuable religious experience, bringing out many 
of the Christian virtues. It may have had its 
origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for 
our good. Of course I need n't explain that it is 
the thirteenth century ecclesiastic Gothic that is 
epidemic in this country ; and I think it has 
attacked the Congregational and the other non- 
ritual churches more violently than any others. 
We have had it here in its most beautiful and 
dangerous forms. I believe we are pretty much 
all of us supplied with a Gothic church now. 
Such has been the enthusiasm in this devout 
direction, that I should not be surprised to see 



172 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

our rich private citizens putting up Gothic 
churches for their individual amusement and 
sanctification. As the day will probably come 
when every man in Hartford will live in his own 
mammoth, five-story granite insurance building, 
it may not be unreasonable to expect that every 
man will sport his own Gothic church. It is 
beginning to be discovered that the Gothic sort 
of church edifice is fatal to the Congregational 
style of worship that has been prevalent here in 
New England ; but it will do nicely (as they say 
in Boston) for private devotion. 

There is n't a finer or purer church than ours 
anywhere, inside and outside Gothic to the last. 
The elevation of the nave gives it even that 
" high - shouldered " appearance which seemed 
more than anything else to impress Mr. Haw- 
thorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancy that 
for genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceed- 
ed by any church in the city. Our chapel in the 
rear is as Gothic as the rest of it, — a beautiful 
little edifice. The committee forgot to make any 
more provision for ventilating that than the 
church, and it takes a pretty well-seasoned Chris- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 173 

tian to stay in it long at a time. The Sunday 
school is held there, and it is thought to be best 
to accustom the children to bad air before they 
go into the church. The poor little dears should 
n't have the wickedness and impurity of this 
world break on them too suddenly. If the stran- 
ger noticed any lack about our church, it would 
be that of a spire. There is a place for one ; 
indeed, it was begun, and then the builders seem 
to have stopped, with the notion that it would 
grow itself from such a good root. It is a mis- 
take, however, to suppose that we do not know 
that the church has what the profane here call 
a "stump-tail" appearance. But the profane are 
as ignorant of history as they are of true Gothic. 
All the Old World cathedrals were the work of 
centuries. That at Milan is scarcely finished 
yet ; the unfinished spires of the Cologne cathe- 
dral are one of the best-known features of it. I 
doubt if it would be in the Gothic spirit to finish 
a church at once. We can tell cavillers that we 
shall have a spire at the proper time, and not 
a minute before. It may depend a little upon 
what the Baptists do, who are to build near us. 



174 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



I, for one, think we had better wait and see how 
high the Baptist spire is before we run ours up. 
The church is everything that could be desired 
inside. There is the nave, with its lofty and 
beautiful arched ceiling ; there are the side aisles, 
and two elegant rows of stone pillars, stained so 
as to be a perfect imitation of stucco ; there is 
the apse, with its stained glass and exquisite 
lines ; and there is an organ-loft over the front 
entrance, with a rose window. Nothing was 
wanting, so far as we could see, except that we 
should adapt ourselves to the circumstances ; and 
that we have been trying to do ever since. It 
may be well to relate how we do it, for the bene- 
fit of other inchoate Goths. 

It was found that if we put up the organ in 
the loft, it would hide the beautiful rose window. 
Besides, we wanted congregational singing, and 
if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under 
the roof, like a cage of birds, we should not have 
congregational singing. We therefore left the 
organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it 
than to satisfy our Gothic cravings. As for 
choir, — several of the singers of the church vol- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 175 

unteered to sit together in the front side-seats, 
and as there was no place for an organ, they 
gallantly rallied round a melodeon, — or perhaps 
it is a cabinet organ, — a charming instrument, 
and, as everybody knows, entirely in keeping 
with the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real 
Gothic edifice. It is the union of simplicity with 
grandeur, for which we have all been looking. I 
need not say to those who have ever heard a 
melodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, 
even in the finest churches on the Continent. 
And we had congregational singing. And it 
went very well indeed. One of the advantages 
of pure congregational singing is that you can 
join in the singing whether you have a voice or 
not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor 
can do the same. It is strange what an uncom- 
monly poor lot of voices there is, even among 
good people. But we enjoy it. If you do not 
enjoy it, you can change your seat until you get 
among a good lot. 

So far, everything went well. But it was next 
discovered that it was difficult to hear the minis- 
ter, who had a very handsome little desk in the 



\JO BACKLOG STUDIES. 

apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the con- 
gregation ; still, we could most of us see him on a 
clear day. The church was admirably built for 
echoes, and the centre of the house was very 
favorable to them. When you sat in the centre 
of the house, it sometimes seemed as if three 
or four ministers were speaking. It is usually so 
in cathedrals ; the Right Reverend So-and-So is 
assisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, 
and the good deal Reverend Thus-and-Thus, and 
so on. But a good deal of the minister's voice 
appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, 
as there was no one up there, some of his best 
things were lost. We also had a notion that 
some of it went into the cavernous organ-loft. 
It would have been all right if there had been a 
choir there, for choirs usually need more preach- 
ing, and pay less heed to it, than any other part 
of the congregation. Well, we drew a sort of 
screen over the organ-loft ; but the result was not 
as marked as we had hoped. We next devised a 
sounding-board, — a sort of mammoth clam-shell, 
painted white, and erected it behind the minis- 
ter. It had a good effect on the minister. It 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 77 

kept him up straight to his work. So long as 
he kept his head exactly in the focus, his voice 
went out and did not return to him ; but if he 
moved either way he was assailed by a Babel of 
clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity for 
him to splurge about from side to side of the 
pulpit, as some do. And if he raised his voice 
much, or attempted any extra flights, he was 
liable to be drowned in a refluent sea of his own 
eloquence. And he could hear the congregation 
as well as they could hear him. All the coughs, 
whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden 
tympanum behind him, and poured into his ears. 
But the sounding-board was an improvement, 
and we advanced to bolder measures ; having 
heard a little, we wanted to hear more. Besides, 
those who sat in front began to be discontented 
with the melodeon. There are depths in music 
which the melodeon, even when it is called a 
cabinet organ, with a colored boy at the bellows, 
cannot sound. The melodeon was not, originally, 
designed for the Gothic worship. We determined 
to have an organ, and we speculated whether, by 
erecting it in the apse, we could not fill up that 



178 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

elegant portion of the church, and compel the 
preacher's voice to leave it, and go out over the 
pews. It would of course do something to efface 
the main beauty of a Gothic church ; but some- 
thing must be done, and we began a series of 
experiments to test the probable effects of putting 
the organ and choir behind the minister. We 
moved the desk to the very front of the platform, 
and erected behind it a high, square board screen, 
like a section of tight fence round the fair-grounds. 
This did help matters. The minister spoke with 
more ease, and we could hear him better. If the 
screen had been intended to stay there, we should 
have agitated the subject of painting it. But this 
was only an experiment. 

Our next move was to shove the screen back 
and mount the volunteer singers, melodeon and 
all, upon the platform, — some twenty of them 
crowded together behind the minister. The 
effect was beautiful. It seemed as if we had 
taken care to select the finest-looking people in 
the congregation, — much to the injury of the 
congregation, of course, as seen from the plat- 
form. There are few congregations that can 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



179 



stand this sort of culling, though ours can en- 
dure it as well as any ; yet it devolves upon those 
of us who remain the responsibility of looking as 
well as we can. The experiment was a success, 
so far as appearances went, but when the screen 
went back, the minister's voice went back with it. 
We could not hear him very well, though we 
could hear the choir as plain as day. We have 
thought of remedying this last defect by putting 
the high screen in front of the singers, and close 
to the minister, as it was before. This would make 
the singers invisible, — " though lost to sight, to 
memory dear," — what is sometimes called an 
" angel choir," when the singers (and the melo- 
deon) are concealed, with the most subdued 
and religious effect. It is often so in cathedrals. 
This plan would have another advantage. The 
singers on the platform, all handsome and well 
dressed, distract our attention from the minister, 
and what he is saying. We cannot help looking 
at them, studying all the faces and all the dresses. 
If one of them sits up very straight, he is a re- 
buke to us ; if he " lops " over, we wonder why 
he does n't sit up ; if his hair is white, we wonder 
whether it is age or family peculiarity ; if he 



180 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

yawns, we want to yawn ; if he takes up a hymn- 
book, we wonder if he is uninterested in the 
sermon ; we look at the bonnets, and query if 
that is the latest spring style, or whether we are 
to look for another ; if he shaves close, we wonder 
why he does n't let his beard grow ; if he has long 
whiskers, we wonder why he does n't trim 'em ; if 
she sighs, we feel sorry ; if she smiles, we would 
like to know what it is about. And, then, sup- 
pose any of the singers should ever want to eat 
fennel, or peppermints, or Brown's troches, and 
pass them round ! Suppose the singers, more or 
less of them, should sneeze ! Suppose one or two 
of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will, 
should go to sleep ! In short, the singers there 
take away all our attention from the minister, and 
would do so if they were the homeliest people in 
the world. We must try something else. 

It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious 
life is not an idle one. 





%fe 



ERHAPS the clothes question is ex- 
hausted, philosophically. I cannot but 
regret that the Poet of the Breakfast- 
Table, who appears to have an uncontrolla- 
ble penchant for saying the things you would like 
to say yourself, has alluded to the anachro- 
nism of "Sir Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the 
mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit." 
A great many scribblers have felt the disadvan- 
tage of writing after Montaigne; and it is impos- 
sible to tell how much originality in others Dr. 
Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist 
there are some men you always prefer to have on 
your left hand, and I take it that this intuitive 
essayist, who is so alert to seize the few remain- 



1 82 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

ing unappropriated ideas and analogies in the 
world, is one of them. 

No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were 
required to dress in a suit of chain-armor and 
wear iron pots on their heads, they would be as 
ridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage. 
The pit which recognizes Snooks in his tin 
breastplate and helmet laughs at him, and Snooks 
himself feels like a sheep ; and when the great 
tragedian comes on, shining in mail, dragging a 
two-handed sword, and mouths the grandiloquence 
which poets have put into the speech of heroes, 
the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and 
its feigned love of the traditionary drama not to 
titter. 

If this sort of acting, which is supposed to 
have come down to us from the Elizabethan age, 
and which culminated in the school of the Keans, 
Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity 
to life, it must have been in a society as artifi- 
cial as the prose of Sir Philip Sidney. That 
anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think, 
especially when we read what privileges the 
fine beaux and gallants of the town took behind 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 83 

the scenes and on the stage in the golden days 
of the drama. When a part of the audience sat 
on the stage, and gentlemen lounged or reeled 
across it in the midst of a play, to speak to 
acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could 
not have been very strong. ( 

Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Hora- 
tia, or Hackett as FalstafF, may actually seem to 
be the character assumed by virtue of a trans- 
forming imagination, but I suppose the fact to 
be that getting into a costume, absurdly anti- 
quated and remote from all the habits and asso- 
ciations of the actor, largely accounts for the 
incongruity and ridiculousness of most of our 
modern acting. Whether what is called the 
"legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not 
know, but the advocates of it appear to think 
that the theatre was some time cast in a mould, 
once for all, and is good for all times and peo- 
ples, like the propositions of Euclid. To our 
eyes the legitimate drama of to-day is the one 
in which the day is reflected, both in costume 
and speech, and which touches the affections, 
the passions, the humor, of the present time. 



1 84 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

The brilliant success of the few good plays that 
have been written out of the rich life which we 
now live — the most varied, fruitful, and dra- 
matically suggestive — ought to rid us forever 
of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or 
spectacular curiosity. 

We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Rich- 
ard III. stalking about in impossible clothes, and 
stepping four feet at a stride, if they want to, but 
let them not claim to be more " legitimate " than 
" Ours " or " Rip Van Winkle." There will prob- 
ably be some orator for years and years to come, 
at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking, 
Where is Thebes ? but he does not care any- 
thing about it, and he does not really expect an. 
answer. I have sometimes wished I knew the 
exact site of Thebes, so that I could rise in the 
audience, and stop that question, at any rate. 
It is legitimate, but it is tiresome. 

If we went to the bottom of this subject, I 
think we should find that the putting upon actors' 
clothes to which they are unaccustomed makes 
them act and talk artificially, and often in a man- 
ner intolerable. An actor who has not the habits 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 185 

or instincts of a gentleman cannot be made to 
appear like one on the stage by dress ; he only 
caricatures and discredits what he tries to repre- 
sent ; and the unaccustomed clothes and situa- 
tion make him much more unnatural and insuf- 
ferable than he would otherwise be. Dressed 
appropriately for parts for which he is fitted, he 
will act well enough, probably. What I mean is, 
that the clothes inappropriate to the man make 
the incongruity of him and his part more appar- 
ent. Vulgarity is never so conspicuous as in 
fine apparel, on or off the stage, and never so 
self-conscious. Shall we have, then, no refined 
characters on the stage ? Yes ; but let them be 
taken by men and women of taste and refine- 
ment, and let us have done with this masquerad- 
ing in false raiment, ancient and modern, which 
makes nearly every stage a travesty of nature 
and the whole theatre a painful pretension. We 
do not expect the modern theatre to be a place 
of instruction (that business is now turned over 
to the telegraphic operator, who is making a 
new language), but it may give amusement in- 
stead of torture, and do a little in satirizing folly 



1 86 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

and kindling love of home and country by the 
way. 

This is a sort of summary of what we all said, 
and no one in particular is responsible for it; 
and in this it is like public opinion. The Par- 
son, however, whose only experience of the thea- 
tre was the endurance of an oratorio once, was 
very cordial in his denunciation of the stage 
altogether. 

Mandeville. Yet, acting itself is delightful ; 
nothing so entertains us as mimicry, the person- 
ation of character. We enjoy it in private. I 
confess that I am always pleased with the Par- 
son in the character of grumbler. He would be 
an immense success on the stage. I don't know 
but the theatre will have to go back into the 
hands of the priests, who once controlled it. 

The Parson. Scoffer ! 

Mandeville. I can imagine how enjoyable 
the stage might be, cleared of all its traditionary 
nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior, all 
the rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and 
the manners of times that were both artificial 
and immoral, and filled with living characters, 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 187 

who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit 
and culture that are current to-day. I 've seen 
private theatricals, where all the performers were 
persons of cultivation, that — 

Our Next Door. So have I. For some- 
thing particularly cheerful, commend me to ama- 
teur theatricals. I have passed some melancholy 
hours at them. 

Mandeville. That 's because the performers 
acted the worn stage plays, and attempted to do 
them in the manner they had seen on the stage. 
It is not always so. 

The Fire -Tender. I suppose Mandeville 
would say that acting has got into a mannerism 
which is well described as stagey ; and is sup- 
posed to be natural to the stage, just as half the 
modern poets write in a recognized form of lit- 
erary manufacture, without the least impulse from 
within, and not with the purpose of saying any- 
thing, but of turning out a piece of literary work. 
That 's the reason we have so much poetry that 
impresses one like sets of faultless cabinet-furni- 
ture made by machinery. 

The Parson. But you need n't talk of nature 



1 88 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

or naturalness in acting or in anything. I tell 
you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone. 
Amateur acting — they get it up at church socia- 
bles nowadays — is apt to be as near nature as a 
school-boy's declamation. Acting is the Devil's 
art. 

The Mistress. Do you object to such inno-. 
cent amusement ? 

Mandeville. What the Parson objects to is, 
that he is n't amused. 

The Parson. What 's the use of objecting ? 
It 's the fashion of the day to amuse people into 
the kingdom of heaven. 

Herbert. The Parson has got us off the 
track. My notion about the stage is, that it keeps 
along pretty evenly with the rest of the world ; 
the stage is usually quite up to the level of the 
audience. Assumed dress on the stage, since 
you were speaking of that, makes people no 
more constrained and self-conscious than it 
does off the stage. 

The Mistress. What sarcasm is coming 
now? 

Herbert. Well, you may laugh, but the 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 89 

world has n't got used to good clothes yet. 
The majority do not wear them with ease. 
People who only put on their best on rare and 
stated occasions step into an artificial feeling. 

Our Next Door. I wonder if that 's the 
reason the Parson finds it so difficult to get 
hold of his congregation. 

Herbert. I don't know how else to account 
for the formality and vapidity of a set " party," 
where all the guests are clothed in a manner to 
which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a 
condition of vivid self-consciousness. The same 
people, who know each other perfectly well, 
will enjoy themselves together without restraint 
in their ordinary apparel. But nothing can be 
more artificial than the behavior of people to- 
gether who rarely " dress up." It seems impos- 
sible to make the conversation as fine as the 
clothes, and so it dies in a kind of inane helpless- 
ness. Especially is this true in the country, 
where people have not obtained the mastery of 
their clothes that those who live in the city have. 
It is really absurd, at this stage of our civiliza- 
tion, that we should be so affected by such an 



190 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

insignificant accident as dress. Perhaps Mande- 
ville can tell us whether this clothes panic pre- 
vails in the older societies. 

The Parson. Don't. We 've heard it ; about 
its being one of the Englishman's thirty-nine 
articles that he never shall sit down to dinner 
without a dress-coat, and all that. 

The Mistress. I wish, for my part, that 
everybody who has time to eat a dinner would 
dress for that, the principal event of the day, and 
do respectful and leisurely justice to it. 

The Young Lady. It has always seemed sin- 
gular to me that men who work so hard to build 
elegant houses, and have good dinners, should 
take so little leisure to enjoy either. 

Mandeville. If the Parson will permit me, I 
should say that the chief clothes question abroad 
just now is, how to get any ; and it is the same 
with the dinners. 

II. 

It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk 
about clothes ran into the question of dress- 
reform, and ran out, of course. You cannot 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 191 

converse on anything nowadays that you do not 
run into some reform. The Parson says that 
everybody is intent on reforming everything but 
himself. We are all trying to associate ourselves 
to make everybody else behave as we do. Said 

Our Next Door. Dress reform ! As if peo- 
ple could n't change their clothes without concert 
of action. Resolved, that nobody should put on 
a clean collar oftener than his neighbor does. 
I 'm sick of every sort of reform. I should like 
to retrograde awhile. Let a dyspeptic ascer- 
tain that he can eat porridge three times a day 
and live, and straightway he insists that every- 
body ought to eat porridge and nothing else. I 
mean to get up a society every member of which 
shall be pledged to do just as he pleases. 

The Parson. That would be the most radical 
reform of the day. That would be independence. 
If people dressed according to their means, acted 
according to their convictions, and avowed their 
opinions, it would revolutionize society. 

Our Next Door. I should like to walk into 
your church some Sunday and see the changes 
under such conditions. 



I92 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

The Parson. It might give you a novel sen- 
sation to walk in at any time. And I 'm not 
sure but the church would suit your retrograde 
ideas. It 's so Gothic that a Christian of the 
Middle Ages, if he were alive, could n't see or 
hear in it. 

Herbert. I don't know whether these reform- 
ers who carry the world on their shoulders in 
such serious fashion, especially the little fussy 
fellows, who are themselves the standard of the 
regeneration they seek, are more ludicrous than 
pathetic. 

The Fire-Tender. Pathetic, by all means. 
But I don't know that they would be pathetic 
if they were not ludicrous. There are those 
reform singers who have been piping away 
so sweetly now for thirty years, with never 
any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusi- 
asm ; their hair growing longer and longer, their 
eyes brighter and brighter, and their faces, I 
do believe, sweeter and sweeter ; singing always 
with the same constancy for the slave, for the 
drunkard, for the snuff-taker, for the suffragist, — . 
"There 's-a-good-time-com-ing-boys (nothing of 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 193 

fensive is intended by " boys," it is put in for eu- 
phony, and sung pianissimo, not to offend the 
suffragists), it 's-almost-here." And what a bright- 
ening up of their faces there is when they say, 
" it 's-al-most-here," not doubting for a moment 
that " it 's " coming to-morrow ; and the accom- 
panying melodeon also wails its wheezy sugges- 
tion that " it 's-al-most-here," that " good-time " 
(delayed so long, waiting perhaps for the inven- 
tion of the melodeon) when we shall all sing and 
all play that cheerful instrument, and all vote, 
and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, 
" boys." I declare it almost makes me cry to 
hear them, so touching is their faith in the 
midst of a jeering world. 

Herbert. I suspect that no one can be a 
genuine reformer and not be ridiculous. I mean 
those who give themselves up to the unction of 
the reform. 

The Mistress. Does n't that depend upon 
whether the reform is large or petty ? 

The Fire-Tender. I should say rather that 
the reforms attracted to them all the ridiculous 
people, who almost always manage to become 



194 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



the most conspicuous. I suppose that nobody 
dare write out all that was ludicrous in the great 
abolition movement. But it was not at all comi- 
cal to those most zealous in it ; they never could 
see — more 's the pity, for thereby they lose 
much — the humorous side of their perform- 
ances, and that is why the pathos overcomes 
one's sense of the absurdity of such people. 

The Young Lady. It is lucky for the world 
that so many are willing to be absurd. 

Herbert. Well, I think that, in the main, 
the reformers manage to look out for themselves 
tolerably well. I knew once a lean and faithful 
agent of a great philanthropic scheme, who con- 
trived to collect every year for the cause just 
enough to support him at a good hotel com- 
fortably. 

The Mistress. That 's identifying one's self 
with the cause. 

Mandeville. You remember the great free- 
soil convention at Buffalo, in 1848, when Van 
Buren was nominated. All the world of hope 
and discontent went there, with its projects of 
reform. There seemed to be no doubt, among 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



195 



hundreds that attended it, that if they could get 
a resolution passed that bread should be buttered 
on both sides, that it would be so buttered. The 
platform provided for every want and every woe. 

The Fire-Tender. I remember. If you could 
get the millennium by political action, we should 
have had it then. 

Mandeville. We went there on the Erie 
Canal, the exciting and fashionable mode of travel 
in those days. I was a boy when we began the 
voyage. The boat was full of conventionists ; 
all the talk was of what must be done there. I 
got the impression that as that boat-load went so 
would go the convention ; and I was not alone in 
that feeling. I can never be enough grateful for 
one little scrubby fanatic who was on board, who 
spent most of his time in drafting resolutions and 
reading them privately to the passengers. He 
was a very enthusiastic, nervous, and somewhat 
dirty little man, who wore a woollen muffler about 
his throat, although it was summer ; he had 
nearly lost his voice, and could only speak in a 
hoarse, disagreeable whisper, and he always car- 
ried a teacup about, containing some sticky com- 



I96 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

pound which he stirred frequently with a spoon, 
and took, whenever he talked, in order to improve 
his voice. If he was separated from his cup for 
ten minutes his whisper became inaudible. I 
greatly delighted in him, for I never saw any one 
who had so much enjoyment of his own impor- 
tance. He was fond of telling what he would do 
if the convention rejected such and such resolu- 
tions. He 'd make it hot for 'em. I did n't know 
but he 'd make them take his mixture. The con- 
vention had got to take a stand on tobacco, for 
one thing. He 'd heard Giddings took snuff; 
he 'd see. When we at length reached Buffalo 
he took his teacup and carpet-bag of resolutions 
and went ashore in a great hurry. I saw him 
once again in a cheap restaurant, whispering a 
resolution to another delegate, but he did n't 
appear in the convention. I have often won- 
dered what became of him. 

Our Next Door. Probably he 's ccnsul some- 
where. They mostly are. 

The Fire-Tender. After all, it 's the easiest 
thing in the world to sit and sneer at eccentrici- 
ties. But what a dead and uninteresting world it 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 1 97 

would be if we were all proper, and kept within 
the lines ! Affairs would soon be reduced to 
mere machinery. There are moments, even 
days, when all interests and movements appear 
to be settled upon some universal plan of equi- 
librium ; but just then some restless and absurd 
person is inspired to throw the machine out of 
gear. These individual eccentricities seem to be 
the special providences in the general human 
scheme. 

Herbert. They make it very hard work for 
the rest of us, who are disposed to go along 
peaceably and smoothly. 

Mandeville. And stagnate. I 'm not sure 
but the natural condition of this planet is war, 
and that when it is finally towed to its anchorage 
— if the universe has any harbor for worlds out 
of commission — it will look like the Fighting 
Temeraire in Turner's picture. 

Herbert. There is another thing I should 
like to understand : the tendency of people who 
take up one reform, perhaps a personal regen- 
eration in regard to some bad habit, to run 
into a dozen other isms, and get all at sea in 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



several vague and pernicious theories and prac- 
tices. 

Mandeville. Herbert seems to think there 
is safety in a man's being anchored, even if it is 
to a bad habit. 

Herbert. Thank you. But what is it in 
human nature that is apt to carry a man who 
may take a step in personal reform into so many 
extremes ? 

Our Next Door. Probably it 's human nature. 

Herbert. Why, for instance, should a re- 
formed drunkard (one of the noblest examples of 
victory over self) incline, as I have known the 
reformed to do, to spiritism, or a woman suf- 
fragist to "pantarchism" (whatever that is), and 
want to pull up all the roots of society, and 
expect them to grow in the air, like orchids ; or 
a Graham-bread disciple become enamored of 
Communism ? 

Mandeville. I know an excellent Conserva- 
tive who would, I think, suit you; he says that 
he does not see how a man who indulges in the 
theory and practice of total abstinence can be a 
consistent believer in the Christian religion. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



I 99 



Herbert. Well, I can understand what he 
means : that a person is bound to hold himself in 
conditions of moderation and control, using and 
not abusing the things of this world, practising 
temperance, not retiring into a convent of artifi- 
cial restrictions in order to escape the full re- 
sponsibility of self-control. And yet his theory 
would certainly wreck most men and women. 
What does the Parson say ? 

The Parson. That the world is going crazy 
on the notion of individual ability. Whenever a 
man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else, 
without the aid of the Christian religion, he is 
sure to go adrift, and is pretty certain to be 
blown about by absurd theories, and shipwrecked 
on some pernicious ism. 

The Fire-Tender. I think the discussion 
has touched bottom. 



III. 



I never felt so much the value of a house with 
a backlog in it as during the late spring ; for its 
lateness was its main feature. Everybody was 



200 BACKLOG STUDIES, 

grumbling about it, as if it were something or- 
dered from the tailor, and not ready on the day. 
Day after day it snowed, night after night it blew 
a gale from the northwest ; the frost sunk deep- 
er and deeper into the ground ; there was a pop- 
ular longing for spring that was almost a prayer ; 
the weather bureau was active ; Easter was set a 
week earlier than the year before, but nothing 
seemed to do any good. The robins sat under 
the evergreens, and piped in a disconsolate mood, 
and at last the bluejays came and scolded in the 
midst of the snow-storm, as they always do scold 
in any weather. The crocuses could n't be coaxed 
to come up, even with a pickaxe. I 'm almost 
ashamed now to recall what we said of the 
weather, only I think that people are no more 
accountable for what they say of the weather 
than for their remarks when their corns are 
stepped on. 

We agreed, however, that, but for disappointed 
expectations and the prospect of late lettuce and 
peas, we were gaining by the fire as much as we 
were losing by the frost. And the Mistress fell 
to chanting the comforts of modern civilization. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 201 

The Fire-Tender said he should like to know, 
by the way, if our civilization differed essentially 
from any other in anything but its comforts. 

Herbert. We are no nearer religious unity. 

The Parson. We have as much war as 
ever. 

Mandeville. There was never such a social 
turmoil. 

The Young Lady. The artistic part of our 
nature does not appear to have grown. 

The Fire-Tender. We are quarrelling as to 
whether we are in fact radically different from 
the brutes. 

Herbert. Scarcely two people think alike 
about the proper kind of human government. 

The Parson. Our poetry is made out of 
words, for the most part, and not drawn from 
the living sources. 

Our Next Door. And Mr. Cumming is un- 
corking his seventh phial. I never felt before 
what barbarians we are. 

The Mistress. Yet you won't deny that the 
life of the average man is safer and every way 
more comfortable than it was even a century ago t 



202 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

- _ 

The Fire-Tender. But what I want to know 
is, whether what we call our civilization has done 
anything more for mankind at large than to in- 
crease the ease and pleasure of living ? Science 
has multiplied wealth, and facilitated intercourse, 
and the result is refinement of manners and a 
diffusion of education and information. Are men 
and women essentially changed, however ? I 
suppose the Parson would say we have lost faith, 
for one thing. 

Mandeville. And superstition ; and gained 
toleration. 

Herbert. The question is, whether toleration 
is anything but indifference. 

The Parson. Everything is tolerated now 
but Christian orthodoxy. 

The Fire-Tender. It 's easy enough to make 
a brilliant catalogue of external achievements, 
but I take it that real progress ought to be in 
man himself. It is not a question of what a man 
enjoys, but what can he produce. The best 
sculpture was executed two thousand years ago. 
The best paintings are several centuries old. 
We study the finest architecture in its ruins. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 203 

The standards of poetry are Shakespeare, Homer, 
Isaiah, and David. The latest of the arts, music, 
culminated in composition, though not in execu- 
tion, a century ago. 

The Mistress. Yet culture in music certainly 
distinguishes the civilization of this age. It has 
taken eighteen hundred years for the principles 
of the Christian religion to begin to be prac- 
tically incorporated in government and in or- 
dinary business, and it will take a long time 
for Beethoven to be popularly recognized ; but 
there is growth toward him, and not away 
from him, and when the average culture has 
reached his height, some other genius will still 
more profoundly and delicately express the high- 
est thoughts. 

Herbert. I wish I could believe it. The 
spirit of this age is expressed by the Cal- 
liope. 

The Parson. Yes, it remained for us to add 
church-bells and cannon to the orchestra. 

Our Next Door. It 's a melancholy thought 
to me that we can no longer express ourselves 
with the bass-drum ; there used to be the 



204 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

whole of the Fourth of July in its patriotic 
throbs. 

Mandeville. We certainly have made great 
progress in one art, — that of war. 

The Young Lady. And in the humane alle- 
viations of the miseries of war. 

The Fire-Tender. The most discouraging 
symptom to me in our undoubted advance in the 
comforts and refinements of society is the facility 
with which men slip back into barbarism, if the 
artificial and external accidents of their lives are 
changed. We have always kept a fringe of bar- 
barism on our shifting western frontier ; and I 
think there never was a worse society than 
that in California and Nevada in their early 
days. 

The Young Lady. That is because women 
were absent. 

The Fire-Tender. But women are not ab- 
sent in London and New York, and they are 
conspicuous in the most exceptionable demon- 
strations of social anarchy. Certainly they were 
not wanting in Paris. Yes, there was a city 
widely accepted as the summit of our materia} 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 205 

civilization. No city was so beautiful, so luxuri- 
ous, so safe, so well ordered for the comfort of 
living, and yet it needed only a month or two 
to make it a kind of pandemonium of savagery. 
Its citizens were the barbarians who destroyed 
its own monuments of civilization. I don't mean 
to say that there was no apology for what was 
done there in the deceit and fraud that preceded 
it, but I simply notice how ready the tiger was to 
appear, and how little restraint all the material 
civilization was to the beast. 

The Mistress. I can't deny your instances, 
and yet I somehow feel that pretty much all you 
have been saying is in effect untrue. Not one 
of you would be willing to change our civilization 
for any other. In your estimate you take no 
account, it seems to me, of the growth of charity. 

Mandeville. And you might add a recogni- 
tion of the value of human life. 

The Mistress. I don't believe there was ever 
before diffused everywhere such an element of 
good-will, and never before were women so much 
engaged in philanthropic work. 

The Parson. 7t must be confessed that one 



206 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

of the best signs of the times is woman's charity 
for woman. That certainly never existed to the 
same extent in any other civilization. 

Mandeville. And there is another thing that 
distinguishes us, or is beginning to. That is, the 
notion that you can do something more with a 
criminal than punish him ; and that society has 
not done its duty when it has built a sufficient 
number of schools for one class, or of decent jails 
for another. 

Herbert. It will be a long time before we 
get decent jails. 

Mandeville. But when we do they will be- 
gin to be places of education and training as 
much as of punishment and disgrace. The pub- 
lic will provide teachers in the prisons as it now 
does in the common schools. 

The Fire-Tender. The imperfections of our 
methods and means of selecting those in the com- 
munity who ought to be in prison are so great, 
that extra care in dealing with them becomes us. 
We are beginning to learn that we cannot draw 
arbitrary lines with infallible justice. Perhaps 
half those who are convicted of crimes are as 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



207 



capable of reformation as half those transgressors 
who are not convicted, or who keep inside the 
statutory law. 

Herbert. Would you remove the odium of 
prison ? 

The Fire-Tender. No ; but I would have 
criminals believe, and society believe, that in 
going to prison a man or woman does not pass 
an absolute line and go into a fixed state. 

The Parson. That is, you would not have 
judgment and retribution begin in this world. 

Our Next Door. Don't switch us off into 
theology. I hate to go up in a balloon, or see 
any one else go. 

Herbert. Don't you think there is too much 
leniency toward crime and criminals, taking the 
place of justice, in these days ? 

The Fire-Tender. There may be too much 
disposition to condone the crimes of those who 
have been considered respectable. 

Our Next Door. That is, scarcely anybody 
wants to see his friend hung. 

Mandeville. I think a large part of the bit- 
terness of the condemned arises from a sense of 



20 8 BACKLOG STUDIES. 



the inequality with which justice is administered. 
I am surprised, in visiting jails, to find so few 
respectable-looking convicts. 

Our Next Door. Nobody will go to jail 
nowadays who thinks anything of himself. 

The Fire-Tender. When society seriously 
takes hold of the reformation of criminals (say 
with as much determination as it does to carry 
an election) this false leniency will disappear ; for 
it partly springs from a feeling that punishment 
is unequal, and does not discriminate enough in 
individuals, and that society itself has no right to 
turn a man over to the Devil, simply because he 
shows a strong leaning that way. A part of the 
scheme of those who work for the reformation of 
criminals is to render punishment more certain, 
and to let its extent depend upon reformation. 
There is no reason why a professional criminal, 
who won't change his trade for an honest one, 
should have intervals of freedom in his prison 
life in which he is let loose to prey upon society. 
Criminals ought to be discharged, like insane 
patients, when they are cured. 

Our Next Door. It 's a wonder to me, what 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 209 

with our multitudes of statutes and hosts of 
detectives, that we are any of us out of jail. I 
never come away from a visit to a State-prison 
without a new spasm of fear and virtue. 
The facilities for getting into jail seem to be 
ample. We want more organizations for keep- 
ing people out. 

Mandeville. That is the sort of enterprise 
the women are engaged in, the frustration of the 
criminal tendencies of those born in vice. I 
believe women have it in their power to regen- 
erate the world morally. 

The Parson. It 's time they began to undo 
the mischief of their mother. 

The Mistress. The reason they have not 
made more progress is that they have usually 
confined their individual efforts to one man ; 
they are now organizing for a general cam- 
paign. 

The Fire-Tender. I 'm not sure but here is 
where the ameliorations of the conditions of life, 
which are called the comforts of this civilization, 
come in, after all, and distinguish the age above 
all others. They have enabled the finer powers 



210 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

of women to have play as they could not in a 
ruder age. I should like to live a hundred years 
and see what they will do. 

Herbert. Not much but change the fashions, 
unless they submit themselves to the same train- 
ing and discipline that men do. 

I have no doubt that Herbert had to apologize 
for this remark afterwards in private, as men are 
quite willing to do in particular cases ; it is only 
in general they are unjust. The talk drifted 
off into general and particular depreciation of 
other times. Mandeville described a picture, in 
which he appeared to have confidence, of a fight 
between an Iguanodon and a Megalosaurus, where 
these huge iron-clad brutes were represented 
chewing up different portions of each other's 
bodies in a forest of the lower cretaceous period. 
So far as he could learn, that sort of thing went 
on unchecked for hundreds of thousands of years, 
and was typical of the intercourse of the races of 
man till a comparatively recent period. There 
was also that gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus ; in 
fact, all the early brutes were disgusting. He 
delighted to think that even the lower animals 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



211 



had improved, both in appearance and disposi- 
tion. 

The conversation ended, therefore, in a very 
amicable manner, having been taken to a ground 
that nobody knew anything about. 





AN you have a backlog in July ? That 
depends upon circumstances. 

In northern New England it is con- 
sidered a sign of summer when the housewives 
fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain 
laurel, and, later, with the feathery stalks of 
the asparagus. This is often, too, the timid 
expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic 
repression, which has not sufficient vent in the 
sweet-william and hollyhock at the front door. 
This is a yearning after beauty and ornamenta- 
tion which has no other means of gratifying itself. 
In the most rigid circumstances, the graceful 
nature of woman thus discloses itself in these 
mute expressions of an undeveloped taste. You 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 21 3 

may never doubt what the common flowers grow- 
ing along the pathway to the front door mean 
to the maiden of many summers who tends 
them ; — love and religion, and the weariness of 
an uneventful life. The sacredness of the Sab- 
bath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed and 
unrequited affection, the slow years of gathering 
and wasting sweetness, are in the smell of the 
pink and the sweet-clover. These sentimental 
plants breathe something of the longing of the 
maiden who sits in the Sunday evenings of 
summer on the lonesome front door-stone, sing- 
ing the hymns of the saints, and perennial as the 
myrtle that grows thereby. 

Yet not always in summer, even with the aid 
of unrequited love and devotional feeling, is it 
safe to let the fire go out on the hearth, in our 
latitude. I remember when the last almost total 
eclipse of the sun happened in August, what a 
bone-piercing chill came over the world. Per- 
haps the imagination had something to do with 
causing the chill from that temporary hiding of 
the sun to feel so much more penetrating than 
that from the coming on of night, which shortly 



214 BACKLOG STUDIES- 

followed. It was impossible not to experience a 
shudder as of the approach of the Judgment Day, 
when the shadows were flung upon the green 
lawn, and we all stood in the wan light, looking 
unfamiliar to each other. The birds in the trees 
felt the spell. We could in fancy see those spec- 
tral camp-fires which men would build on the 
earth, if the sun should slow its fires down to 
about the brilliancy of the moon. It was a great 
relief to all of us to go into the house, and, before 
a blazing wood fire, talk of the end of the world. 
In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let 
the fire go out ; it is best to bank it, for it needs 
but the turn of a weather-vane at any hour to 
sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring 
down the chill of Hudson's Bay. There are days 
when the steamship on the Atlantic glides calmly 
along under a full canvas, but its central fires 
must always be ready to make steam against 
head-winds and antagonistic waves. Even in 
our most smiling summer days one needs to have 
the materials of a cheerful fire at hand. It is 
only by this readiness for a change that one can 
preserve an equal mind. We are made provident 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



215 



and sagacious by the fickleness of our climate. 
We should be another sort of people if we could 
have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which 
the Egyptian has. The gravity and repose of the 
Eastern peoples is due to the unchanging aspect 
of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity 
of the great climatic processes. Our literature, 
politics, religion, show the effect of unsettled 
weather. But they compare favorably with the 
Egyptian, for all that. 

II. 

You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with 
what longing I look back to those winter days by 
the fire ; though all the windows are open to this 
May morning, and the brown thrush is singing 
in the chestnut-tree, and I see everywhere that 
first delicate flush of spring, which seems too 
evanescent to be color even, and amounts to little 
more than a suffusion of the atmosphere. I 
doubt, indeed, if the spring is exactly what it 
used to be, or if, as we get on in years [no one 
ever speaks of " getting on in years " till she is 



2l6 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

virtually settled in life], its promises and sugges- 
tions do not seem empty in comparison with the 
sympathies and responses of human friendship, 
and the stimulation of society. Sometimes noth- 
ing is so tiresome as a perfect day in a perfect 
season. 

I only imperfectly understand this. The Par- 
son says that woman is always most restless 
under the most favorable conditions, and that 
there is no state in which she is really happy 
except that of change. I suppose this is the 
truth taught in what has been called the " Myth 
of the Garden." Woman is perpetual revolution, 
and is that element in the world which continu- 
ally destroys and re-creates. She is the experi- 
menter and the suggester of new combinations. 
She has no belief in any law of eternal fitness 
of things. She is never even content with any 
arrangement of her own house. The only reason 
the Mistress could give, when she rearranged her 
apartment, for hanging a picture in what seemed 
the most inappropriate place, was that it had 
never been there before. Woman has no respect 
for tradition, and because a thing is as it is is 






BACKLOG STUDIES. 



217 



sufficient reason for changing it. When she gets 
into law, as she has come into literature, we shall 
gain something in the destruction of all our vast 
and musty libraries of precedents, which now 
fetter our administration of individual justice. It 
is Mandeville's opinion that women are not so 
sentimental as men, and are not so easily touched 
with the unspoken poetry of nature ; being less 
poetical, and having less imagination, they are 
more fitted for practical affairs, and would make 
less failures in business. I have noticed the 
almost selfish passion for their flowers which old 
gardeners have, and their reluctance to part with 
a leaf or a blossom from their family. They love 
the flowers for themselves. A woman raises 
flowers for their use. She is destruction in a 
conservatory. She wants the flowers for her 
lover, for the sick, for the poor, for the Lord on 
Easter day, for the ornamentation of her house. 
She delights in the costly pleasure of sacrificing 
them. She never sees a flower but she has an 
intense but probably sinless desire to pick it. 

It has been so from the first, though from the 
first she has been thwarted by the accidental 



2l8 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

superior strength of man. Whatever she has 
obtained has been by craft, and by the same coax- 
ing which the sun uses to draw the blossoms out 
of the apple-trees. I am not surprised to learn 
that she has become tired of indulgences, and 
wants some of the original rights. We are just 
beginning to find out the extent to which she has 
been denied and subjected, and especially her con- 
dition among the primitive and barbarous races. 
I have never seen it in a platform of grievances, 
but it is true that among the Fijians she is not, 
unless a better civilization has wrought a change 
in her behalf, permitted to eat people, even her 
own sex, at the feasts of the men ; the dainty 
enjoyed by the men being considered too good 
to be wasted on women. Is anything wanting to 
this picture of the degradation of woman ? By a 
refinement of cruelty she receives no benefit 
whatever from the missionaries who are sent out 
by — what to her must seem a new name for 
Tan-talus — the American Board. 

I suppose the Young Lady expressed a nearly 
universal feeling in her regret at the breaking up 
of the winter-fireside company. Society needs 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



2ig 



a certain seclusion and the sense of security. 
Spring opens the doors and the windows, and 
the noise and unrest of the world are let in. 
Even a winter thaw begets a desire to travel, and 
summer brings longings innumerable, and dis- 
turbs the most tranquil souls. Nature is, in fact, 
a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrim- 
ages and of excursions of the fancy which never 
come to any satisfactory haven. The summer in 
these latitudes is a campaign of sentiment and 
a season, for the most part, of restlessness and 
discontent. We grow now in hot-houses roses 
which, in form and color, are magnificent, and 
appear to be full of passion ; yet one simple June 
rose of the open air has for the Young Lady, 
I doubt not, more sentiment and suggestion of 
love than a conservatory full of them in January. 
And this suggestion, leavened as it is with the 
inconstancy of nature, stimulated by the promises 
which are so often like the peach-bloom of the 
Judas-tree, unsatisfying by reason of its vague 
possibilities, differs so essentially from the more 
limited and attainable and home-like emotion 
born of quiet intercourse by the winter fireside, 



220 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

that I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as if 
some spell had been broken by the transition of 
her life from in-doors to out-doors. Her secret, 
if secret she has, which I do not at all know, is 
shared by the birds and the new leaves and the 
blossoms on the fruit trees. If we lived else^ 
where, in that zone where the poets pretend 
always to dwell, we might be content, perhaps 
I should say drugged, by the sweet influences 
of an unchanging summer ; but not living else- 
where, we can understand why the Young Lady 
probably now looks forward to the hearthstone 
as the most assured centre of enduring attach^ 
ment. 

If it should ever become the sad duty of this bi- 
ographer to write of disappointed love, I am sure 
he would not have any sensational story to tell 
of the Young Lady. She is one of those women 
whose unostentatious lives are the chief blessing 
of humanity ; who, with a sigh heard only by 
herself and no change in her sunny face, would 
put behind her all the memories of winter even- 
ings and the promises of May mornings, and 
give her life to some ministration of human kind- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 221 

ftess with an assiduity that would make her occu- 
pation appear like an election and a first choice. 
The disappointed man scowls, and hates his race, 
and threatens self-destruction, choosing oftener 
the flowing bowl than the dagger, and becoming 
a reeling nuisance in the world. It would be 
much more manly in him to become the secre- 
tary of a Dorcas society. 

I suppose it is true that women work for 
others with less expectation of reward than men, 
and give themselves to labors of self-sacrifice 
with much less thought of self. At least, this is 
true unless woman goes into some public per- 
formance, where notoriety has its attractions, and 
mounts some cause, to ride it man-fashion, when 
I think she becomes just as eager for applause 
and just as willing that self-sacrifice should result 
in self-elevation as man. For her, usually, are 
not those unbought " presentations " which are 
forced upon firemen, philanthropists, legislators, 
railroad-men, and the superintendents of the 
moral instruction of the young. These are 
almost always pleasing and unexpected tributes 
to worth and modesty, and must be received with 



222 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

satisfaction when the public service rendered has 
not been with a view to procuring them. We 
should say that one ought to be most liable to 
receive a "testimonial" who, being a superin- 
tendent of any sort, did not superintend with a 
view to getting it. But "testimonials" have 
become so common that a modest man ought 
really to be afraid to do his simple duty, for fear 
his motives will be misconstrued. Yet there are 
instances of very worthy men who have had 
things publicly presented to them. It is the 
blessed age of gifts and the reward of private 
virtue. And the presentations have become so 
frequent that we wish there were a little more 
variety in them. There never was much sense 
in giving a gallant fellow a big speaking-trumpet 
to carry home to aid him in his intercourse with 
his family ; and the festive ice-pitcher has become 
a too universal sign of absolute devotion to the 
public interest. The lack of one will soon be 
proof that a man is a knave. The legislative 
cane with the gold head, also, is getting to be 
recognized as the sign of the immaculate public 
servant, as the inscription on it testifies, and the 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 223 

steps of suspicion must erelong dog him who 
does not carry one. The " testimonial " business 
is, in truth, a little demoralizing, almost as much 
so as the " donation " ; and the demoralization 
has extended even to our language, so that a per- 
fectly respectable man is often obliged to see 
himself "made the recipient of " this and that. 
It would be much better, if testimonials must be, 
to give a man a barrel of flour or a keg of oys- 
ters, and let him eat himself at once back into 
the ranks of ordinary men. 



III. 

We may have a testimonial class in time, a 
sort of nobility here in America, made so by pop- 
ular gift, the members of which will all be able 
to show some stick or piece of plated ware or 
massive chain, " of which they have been the 
recipients." In time it may be a distinction not 
to belong to it, and it may come to be thought 
more blessed to give than to receive. For it 
must have been remarked that it is not always to 
the cleverest and the most amiable and modest 



224 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

man that the deputation comes with the inevita- 
ble ice-pitcher (and "salver to match"), which 
has in it the magic and subtle quality of making 
the hour in which it is received the proudest of 
one's life. There has not been discovered any 
method of rewarding all the deserving people 
and bringing their virtues into the prominence 
of notoriety. And, indeed, it would be an unrea- 
sonable world if there had, for its chief charm 
and sweetness lie in the excellences in it which 
are reluctantly disclosed ; one of the chief pleas- 
ures of living is in the daily discovery of good 
traits, nobilities, and kindliness both in those 
we have long known and in the chance pas- 
senger whose way happens for a day to lie with 
ours. The longer I live the more I am im- 
pressed with the excess of human kindness over 
human hatred, and the greater willingness to 
oblige than to disoblige that one meets at every 
turn. The selfishness in politics, the jealousy in 
letters, the bickering in art, the bitterness in 
theology, are all as nothing compared to the 
sweet charities, sacrifices, and deferences of pri- 
vate life. The people are few whom to know 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 225 

intimately is to dislike. Of course you want to 
hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your pow- 
ers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself 
from becoming a mere mush of good-nature ; but 
perhaps it is well to hate some historical person 
who has been dead so long as to be indifferent 
to it. It is more comfortable to hate people 
we have never seen. I cannot but think that 
Judas Iscariot has been of great service to the 
world as a sort of buffer for moral indignation 
which might have made a collision nearer home 
but for his utilized treachery. I used to know a 
venerable and most amiable gentleman and schol- 
ar, whose hospitable house was always overrun 
with wayside ministers, agents, and philanthro- 
pists, who loved their fellow-men better than they 
loved to work for their living ; and he, I suspect, 
kept his moral balance even by indulgence in 
violent but most distant dislikes. When I met 
him casually in the street, his first salutation 
was likely to be such as this : " What a liar that 
Alison was ! Don't you hate him ? " And then 
would follow specifications of historical inveracity 
enough to make one's blood run cold. When he 



226 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

was thus discharged of his hatred by such a con- 
ductor, I presume he had not a spark left for 
those whose mission was partly to live upon him 
and other generous souls. 

Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown 
people, one rainy night by the fire, while the 
Mistress was fitfully and interjectionally playing 
with the piano-keys in an improvising mood. 
Mandeville has a good deal of sentiment about 
him, and without any effort talks so beautifully 
sometimes that I constantly regret I cannot 
report his language. He has, besides, that sym- 
pathy of presence — I believe it is called mag- 
netism by those who regard the brain as only 
a sort of galvanic battery — which makes it a 
greater pleasure to see him think, if I may say 
so, than to hear some people talk. 

It makes one homesick in this world to think 
that there are so many rare people he can 
never know ; and so many excellent people that 
scarcely any one will know, in fact. One discov- 
ers a friend by chance, and cannot but feel regret 
that twenty or thirty years of life maybe have 
been spent without the least knowledge of hira 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 227 

When he is once known, through him opening is 
made into another little world, into a circle of 
culture and loving hearts and enthusiasm in a 
dozen congenial pursuits, and prejudices per- 
haps. How instantly and easily the bachelor 
doubles his world when he marries, and enters 
into the unknown fellowship of the to him con- 
tinually increasing company which is known in 
popular language as " all his wife's relations." 

Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth 
knowing intimately, if one had the time and the 
opportunity. And when one travels he sees 
what a vast material there is for society and 
friendship, of which he can never avail himself. 
Car-load after car-load of summer travel goes by 
one at any railway-station, out of which he is sure 
he could choose a score of life-long friends, if the 
conductor would introduce him. There are faces 
of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetic kind- 
ness, — interesting people, travelled people, en- 
tertaining people, — as you would say in Boston, 
" nice people you would admire to know," whom 
you constantly meet and pass without a sign of 
recognition, many of whom are no doubt your 



228 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

long-lost brothers and sisters. You can see that 
they also have their worlds and their interests, and 
they probably know a great many " nice " people. 
The matter of personal liking and attachment is 
a good deal due to the mere fortune of associa- 
tion. More fast friendships and pleasant acquaint- 
anceships are formed on the Atlantic steamships 
between those who would have been only indif- 
ferent acquaintances elsewhere, than one would 
think possible on a voyage which naturally makes 
one as selfish as he is indifferent to his personal 
appearance. The Atlantic is the only power on 
earth I know that can make a woman indifferent 
to her personal appearance. 

Mandeville remembers, and I think without 
detriment to himself, the glimpses he had in the 
White Mountains once of a young lady of whom 
his utmost efforts could only give him no further 
information than her name. Chance sight of her 
on a passing stage or amid a group on some 
mountain lookout was all he ever had, and he 
did not even know certainly whether she was the 
perfect beauty and the lovely character he thought 
her. He said he would have known her, however, 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 229 

at a great distance ; there was in her form that 
ravishing mingling of grace and command of 
which we hear so much, and which turns out to 
be nearly all command after the "ceremony" ; or 
perhaps it was something in the glance of her eye 
or the turn of her head, or very likely it was a 
sweet inherited reserve or hauteur that captivated 
him, that filled his days with the expectation of 
seeing her, and made him hasten to the hotel- 
registers in the hope that her name was there 
recorded. Whatever it was, she interested him 
as one of the people he would like to know ; and 
it piqued him that there was a life, rich in friend- 
ships, no doubt, in tastes, in many noblenesses, — 
one of thousands of such, — that must be abso- 
lutely nothing to him, — nothing but a window 
into heaven momentarily opened and then closed. 
I have myself no idea that she was a countess 
incognito, or that she had descended from any 
greater heights than those where Mandeville saw 
her, but I have always regretted that she went 
her way so mysteriously and left no clew, and 
that we shall wear out the remainder of our days 
without her society. I have looked for her name, 



230 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

but always in vain, among the attendants at the 
rights' conventions, in the list of those good 
Americans presented at. court, among those skel- 
eton names that appear as the remains of beauty 
in the morning journals after a ball to the wan- 
dering prince, in the reports of railway collisions 
and steamboat explosions. No news comes of 
her. And so imperfect are our means of commu- 
nication in this world that, for anything we know, 
she may have left it long ago by some private 
way. 

IV. 

The lasting regret that we cannot know more of 
the bright, sincere, and genuine people of the world 
is increased by the fact that they are all different 
from each other. Was it not Madame de Sevigne 
who said she had loved several different women for 
several different qualities ? Every real person — 
for there are persons as there are fruits that have 
no distinguishing flavor, mere gooseberries — has 
a distinct quality, and the finding it is always like 
the discovery of a new island to the voyager. 
The physical world we shall exhaust some day, 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



231 



having a written description of every foot of it to 
which we can turn ; but we shall never get the 
different qualities of people into a biographical 
dictionary, and the making acquaintance with a 
human being will never cease to be an exciting 
experiment. We cannot even classify men so as 
to aid us much in our estimate of them. The 
efforts in this direction are ingenious, but unsat- 
isfactory. If I hear that a man is lymphatic or 
nervous-sanguine, I cannot tell therefrom whether 
I shall like and trust him. He may produce a 
phrenological chart showing that his knobby head 
is the home of all the virtues, and that the vicious 
tendencies are represented by holes in his cra- 
nium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not 
be as disagreeable as if phrenology had not been 
invented. I feel sometimes that phrenology is 
the refuge of mediocrity. Its charts are almost 
as misleading concerning character as photo- 
graphs. And photography may be described as 
the art which enables commonplace mediocrity 
to look like genius. The heavy-jowled man with 
shallow cerebrum has only to incline his head so 
that the lying instrument can select a favorable 



232 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

focus, to appear in the picture with the brow of a 
sage and the chin of a poet. Of all the arts for 
ministering to human vanity the photographic is 
the most useful, but it is a poor aid in the reve- 
lation of character. You shall learn more of a 
man's real nature by seeing him walk once up 
the broad aisle of his church to his pew on Sun- 
day, than by studying his photograph for a month. 
No, we do not get any certain standard of men 
by a chart of their temperaments ; it will hardly 
answer to select a wife by the color of her hair ; 
though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, 
she may be no more constant than if it were 
dyed. The farmer who shuns all the lymphatic 
beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife 
the most nervous-sanguine, may find that she is 
unwilling to get up in the winter mornings and 
make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even in 
this scientific age which professes to label us all, 
has been cruelly deceived in this way. Neither 
the blondes nor the brunettes act according to 
the advertisement of their temperaments. The 
truth is that men refuse to come under the clas- 
sifications of the pseudo-scientists, and all our 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 233 

new nomenclatures do not add much to our 
knowledge. You know what to expect — if the 
comparison will be pardoned — of a horse with 
certain points ; but you would n't dare go on a 
journey with a man merely upon the strength of 
knowing that his temperament was the proper 
mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. 
Science is not able to teach us concerning men 
as it teaches us of horses, though I am very far 
from saying that there are not traits of nobleness 
and of meanness that run through families and 
can be calculated to appear in individuals with 
absolute certainty ; one family will be trusty and 
another tricky through all its members for gener- 
ations ; noble strains and ignoble strains are per- 
petuated. When we hear that she has eloped 
with the stable-boy and married him, we are apt 
to remark, " Well, she was a Bogardus." And 
when we read that she has gone on a mission and 
has died, distinguishing herself by some extraor- 
dinary devotion to the heathen at Ujiji, we think 
it sufficient to say, " Yes, her mother married into 
the Smiths." But this knowledge comes of our 
experience of special families, and stands us in 
stead no further. 



234 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

If we cannot classify men scientifically and 
reduce them under a kind of botanical order, as 
if they had a calculable vegetable development, 
neither can we gain much knowledge of them by 
comparison. It does not help me at all in my 
estimate of their characters to compare Mande- 
ville with the Young Lady, or Our Next Door 
with the Parson. The wise man does not permit 
himself to set up even in his own mind any com- 
parison of his friends. His friendship is capable 
of going to extremes with many people, evoked as 
it is by many qualities. When Mandeville goes 
into my garden in June I can usually find him in 
a particular bed of strawberries, but he does not 
speak disrespectfully of the others. When Nature, 
says Mandeville, consents to put herself into any 
sort of strawberry, I have no criticisms to make, 
I am only glad that I have been created into the 
same world with such a delicious manifestation 
of the Divine favor. If I left Mandeville alone in 
the garden long enough, I have no doubt he 
would impartially make an end of the fruit of all 
the beds, for his capacity in this direction is as 
all-embracing as it is in the matter of friendships. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 235 

The Young Lady has also her favorite patch of 
berries. And the Parson, I am sorry to say, pre- 
fers to have them picked for him — the elect of 
the garden — and served in an orthodox manner. 
The strawberry has a sort of poetical precedence, 
and I presume that no fruit is jealous of it any 
more than any flower is jealous of the rose ; but 
I remark the facility with which liking for it is 
transferred to the raspberry, and from the rasp- 
berry (not to make a tedious enumeration) to the 
melon, and from the melon to the grape, and the 
grape to the pear, and the pear to the apple. 
And we do not mar our enjoyment of each by 
comparisons. 

Of course it would be a dull world if we could 
not criticise our friends, but the most unprofit- 
able and unsatisfactory criticism is that by com- 
parison. Criticism is not necessarily uncharita- 
bleness, but a wholesome exercise of our powers 
of analysis and discrimination. It is, however, a 
very idle exercise, leading to no results when we 
set the qualities of one over against the qualities 
of another, and disparage by contrast and not by 
independent judgment. And this method of pro- 



236 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

cedure creates jealousies and heart-burnings in- 
numerable. 

Criticism by comparison is the refuge of inca- 
pables, and especially is this true in literature. 
It is a lazy way of disposing of a young poet to 
bluntly declare, without any sort of discrimina- 
tion of his defects or his excellences, that he 
equals Tennyson, and that Scott never wrote 
anything finer. What is the justice of damning 
a meritorious novelist by comparing him with 
Dickens, and smothering him with thoughtless 
and good-natured eulogy? The poet and the 
novelist may be well enough, and probably have 
qualities and gifts of their own which are worth 
the critic's attention, if he has any time to 
bestow on them ; and it is certainly unjust to 
subject them to a comparison with somebody 
else, merely because the critic will not take the 
trouble to ascertain what they are. If, indeed, 
the poet and novelist are mere imitators of a 
model and copyists of a style, they may be dis- 
missed with such commendation as we bestow 
upon the machines who pass their lives in mak- 
ing bad copies of the pictures of the great paint- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 237 

ers. But the critics of whom we speak do not 
intend depreciation, but eulogy, when they say 
that the author they have in hand has the 
wit of Sydney Smith and the brilliancy of Ma- 
caulay. Probably he is not like either of them, 
and may have a genuine though modest virtue 
of his own ; but these names will certainly kill 
him, and he will never be anybody in the popu- 
lar estimation. The public finds out speedily 
that he is not Sydney Smith, and it resents the 
extravagant claim for him as if he were an impu- 
dent pretender. How many authors of fair ability 
to interest the world have we known in our own 
day who have been thus sky-rocketed into noto- 
riety by the lazy indiscrimination of the critic-by- 
comparison, and then have sunk into a popular 
contempt as undeserved ! I never see a young 
aspirant injudiciously compared to a great and 
resplendent name in literature, but I feel like 
saying, My poor fellow, your days are few and 
full of trouble ; you begin life handicapped, and 
you cannot possibly run a creditable race. 

I think this sort of critical eulogy is more 
damaging even than that which kills by a differ- 



238 BACKLOG STUDIES. 



ent assumption, and one which is equally com- 
mon, namely, that the author has not done what 
he probably never intended to do. It is well 
known that most of the trouble in life comes 
from our inability to compel other people to do 
what we think they ought, and it is true in criti- 
cism that we are unwilling to take a book for 
what it is, and credit the author with that. 
When the solemn critic, like a mastiff with a 
ladies' bonnet in his mouth, gets hold of a light 
piece of verse, or a graceful sketch which catches 
the humor of an hour for the entertainment of an 
hour, he tears it into a thousand shreds. It adds 
nothing to human knowledge, it solves none of 
the problems of life, it touches none of the ques- 
tions of social science, it is not a philosophical 
treatise, and it is not a dozen things that it 
might have been. The critic cannot forgive the 
author for this disrespect to him. This is n't a 
rose, says the critic, taking up a pansy and rend- 
ing it ; it is not at all like a rose, and the author 
is either a pretentious idiot or an idiotic pre- 
tender. What business, indeed, has the author 
to send the critic a bunch of sweet-peas, when he 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



239 



knows that a cabbage would be preferred, — some- 
thing not showy, but useful ? 

A good deal of this is what Mandeville said, 
and I am not sure that it is devoid of personal 
feeling. He published, some years ago, a little 
volume giving an account of a trip through the 
Great West, and a very entertaining book it was. 
But one of the heavy critics got hold of it, and 
made Mandeville appear, even to himself, he con- 
fessed, like an ass, because there was nothing 
in the volume about geology or mining prospects, 
and very little to instruct the student of physical 
geography. With alternate sarcasm and ridicule, 
he literally basted the author, till Mandeville said 
that he felt almost like a depraved scoundrel, and 
thought he should be held up to less execration 
if he had committed a neat and scientific murder. 

But I confess that I have a good deal of sym- 
pathy with the critics. Consider what these 
public tasters have to endure ! None of us, I 
fancy, would like to be compelled to read all that 
they read, or to take into our mouths, even with 
the privilege of speedily ejecting it with a gri- 
mace, all that they sip. The critics of the vint 



240 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



age, who pursue their calling in the dark vaults 
and amid mouldy casks, give their opinion, for 
the most part, only upon wine, upon juice that 
has matured and ripened into the development 
of quality. But what crude, unstrained, unfer- 
mented, even raw and drugged liquor, must the 
literary taster put to his unwilling lips day after 
day! 





T was my good fortune once to visit 
a man who remembered the rebellion 
of 1745. Lest this confession should 
make me seem very aged, I ' will add that the 
visit took place in 185 1, and that the man was 
then one hundred and thirteen years old. He 
was quite a lad before Dr. Johnson drank 
Mrs. Thrale's tea. That he was as old as he 
had the credit of being, I have the evidence 
of my own senses (and I am seldom mistaken in 
a person's age), of his own family, and his own 
word ; and it is incredible that so old a person, 
and one so apparently near the grave, would de- 
ceive about his age. 

The testimony of the very aged is always to 



242 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

be received without question, as Alexander Ham- 
ilton once learned. He was trying a land-title 
with Aaron Burr, and two of the witnesses upon 
whom Burr relied were venerable Dutchmen, 
who had, in their youth, carried the surveying 
chains over the land in dispute, and who were 
now aged respectively one hundred and four 
years and one hundred and six years. Hamilton 
gently attempted to undervalue their testimony, 
but he was instantly put down by the Dutch jus- 
tice, who suggested that Mr. Hamilton could not 
be aware of the age of the witnesses. 

My old man (the expression seems familiar 
and inelegant) had indeed an exaggerated idea 
of his own age, and sometimes said that he sup- 
posed he was going on four hundred, which was 
true enough, in fact ; but for the exact date, he 
referred to his youngest son, — a frisky and, hum- 
orsome lad of eighty years, who had received us 
at the gate, and whom we had at first mistaken 
for the veteran, his father. But when we beheld 
the old man, we saw the difference between age 
and age. The latter had settled into a grizzli- 
ness and grimness which belong to a very aged 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 243 

and stunted but sturdy oak-tree, upon the bark 
of which the gray moss is thick and heavy. The 
old man appeared hale enough, he could walk 
about, his sight and hearing were not seriously 
impaired, he ate with relish, and his teeth were 
so sound that he would not need a dentist for at 
least another century ; but the moss was growing 
on him. His boy of eighty seemed a green sap- 
ling beside him. 

He remembered absolutely nothing that had 
taken place within thirty years, but otherwise 
his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, for 
he must always have been an ignoramus, and 
would never know anything if he lived to be as 
old as he said he was going on to be. Why he 
was interested in the rebellion of 1745 I could 
not discover, for he of course did not go over to 
Scotland to carry a pike in it, and he only re- 
membered to have heard it talked about as a 
great event in the Irish market-town near which 
he lived, and to which he had ridden when a boy. 
And he knew much more about the horse that 
drew him, and the cart in which he rode, than he 
did about the rebellion of the Pretender. 



244 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

I hope I do not appear to speak harshly of this 
amiable old man, and if he is still living I wish 
him well, although his example was bad in some 
respects. He had used tobacco for nearly a cen- 
tury, and the habit has very likely been the death 
of him. If so, it is to be regretted. For it 
would have been interesting to watch the process 
of his gradual disintegration and return to the 
ground ; the loss of sense after sense, as decay- 
ing limbs fall from the oak ; the failure of dis- 
crimination, of the power of choice, and finally 
of memory itself; the peaceful wearing out and 
passing away of body and mind without disease, 
the natural running down of a man. The inter- 
esting fact about him at that time was that his 
bodily powers seemed in sufficient vigor, but that 
the mind had not force enough to manifest itself 
through his organs. The complete battery was 
there, the appetite was there, the acid was eating 
the zinc ; but the electric current was too weak 
to flash from the brain. And yet he appeared so 
sound throughout, that it was difficult to say that 
his mind was not as good as it ever had been. 
He had stored in it very little to feed on, and 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 245 

any mind would get enfeebled by a century's 
rumination on a hearsay idea of the rebellion 

of '45. 

It was possible with this man to fully test 
one's respect for age, which is in all civilized 
nations a duty. And I found that my feelings 
were mixed about him. I discovered in him a 
conceit in regard to his long sojourn on this 
earth, as if it were somehow a credit to him. In 
the presence of his good opinion of himself, I 
could but question the real value of his continued 
life, to himself or to others. If he ever had any 
friends he had outlived them, except his boy ; 
his wives — a century of them — were all dead ; 
the world had actually passed away for him. He 
hung on the tree like a frost-nipped apple, which 
the farmer has neglected to gather. The world 
always renews itself, and remains young. What 
relation had he to it ? 

I was delighted to find that this old man had 
never voted for George Washington. I do not 
know that he had ever heard of him. Washing- 
ton may be said to have played his part since 
his time. I am not sure that he perfectly re- 



246 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

membered anything so recent as the American 
Revolution. He was living quietly in Ireland 
during our French and Indian wars, and he did 
not emigrate to this country till long after our 
revolutionary and our constitutional struggles 
were over. The Rebellion of '45 was the great 
event of the world for him, and of that he knew 
nothing. 

I intend no disrespect to this man, — a cheer- 
ful and pleasant enough old person, — but he 
had evidently lived himself out of the world, as 
completely as people usually die out of it. His 
only remaining value was to the moralist, who 
might perchance make something out of him. 
I suppose if he had died young, he would have 
been regretted, and his friends would have la- 
mented that he did not fill out his days in the 
world, and would very likely have called him back, 
if tears and prayers could have done so. They 
can see now what his prolonged life amounted to, 
and how the world has closed up the gap he once 
filled while he still lives in it. 

A great part of the unhappiness of this world 
consists in regret for those who depart, as it 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 247 

seems to us, prematurely. We imagine that if 
they would return, the old conditions would be 
restored. But would it be so ? If they, in any 
case, came back, would there be any place for 
them? The world so quickly readjusts itself 
after any loss, that the return of the departed 
would nearly always throw it, even the circle 
most interested, into confusion. Are the Enoch 
Ardens ever wanted? 



II. 

A popular notion akin to this, that the world 
would have any room for the departed if they 
should now and then return, is the constant re- 
gret that people will not learn by the expedience 
of others, that one generation learns little from 
the preceding, and that youth never will adopt 
the experience of age. But if experience went for 
anything, we should all come to a stand-still ; for 
there is nothing so discouraging to effort. Dis- 
belief in Ecclesiastes is the main-spring of action. 
In that lies the freshness and the interest of life, 
and it is the source of every endeavor. 



248 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

If the boy believed that the accumulation of 
wealth and the acquisition of power were what 
the old man says they are, the world would very 
soon be stagnant. If he believed that his chances 
of obtaining either were as poor as the majority 
of men find them to be, ambition would die 
within him. It is because he rejects the experi- 
ence of those who have preceded him, that the 
world is kept in the topsy-turvy condition which 
we all rejoice in, and which we call progress. 

And yet I confess I have a soft place in my 
heart for that rare character in our New England 
life who is content with the world as he finds it, 
and who does not attempt to appropriate any 
more of it to himself than he absolutely needs 
from day to day. He knows from the beginning 
that the world could get on without him, and he 
has never had any anxiety to leave any result 
behind him, any legacy for the world to quarrel 
over. 

He is really an exotic in our New England 
climate and society, and his life is perpetually 
misunderstood by his neighbors, because he 
shares none of their uneasiness about getting on 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 249 

in life. He is even called lazy, good-for-nothing, 
and "shiftless," — the final stigma that we put 
upon a person who has learned to wait without 
the exhausting process of laboring. 

I made his acquaintance last summer in the 
country, and I have not in a long time been so 
well pleased with any of our species. He was 
a man past middle life, with a large family. He 
had always been from boyhood of a contented 
and placid mind, slow in his movements, slow in 
his speech. I think he never cherished a hard 
feeling toward anybody, nor envied any one, least 
of all the rich and prosperous about whom he 
liked to talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal 
about wealth, especially about his cousin who 
had been down South and " got fore-handed " 
within a few years. He was genuinely pleased 
at his relation's good luck, and pointed him out 
to me with some pride. But he had no envy of 
him, and he evinced no desire to imitate him. I 
inferred from all his conversation about "piling 
it up," (of which he spoke with a gleam of en- 
thusiasm in his eye,) that there were moments 
when he would like to be rich himself; but it was 



250 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

evident that he would never make the least effort 
to be so, and I doubt if he could even overcome 
that delicious inertia of mind and body called 
laziness, sufficiently to inherit. 

Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar 
fascination for him, and I suspect he was a 
visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet I 
suppose he had hardly the personal property 
which the law exempts from execution. He had 
lived in a great many towns, moving from one 
to another with his growing family, by easy 
stages, and was always the poorest man in the 
town, and lived on the most niggardly of its 
rocky and bramble-grown farms, the productive- 
ness of which he reduced to zero in a couple of 
seasons by his careful neglect of culture. The 
fences of his hired domain always fell into ruins 
under him, perhaps because he sat on them so 
much, and the hovels he occupied rotted down 
during his placid residence in them. He moved 
from desolation to desolation, but carried always 
with him the equal mind of a philosopher. Not 
even the occasional tart remarks of his wife, 
about their nomadic life and his serenity in the 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 25 I 

midst of discomfort, could ruffle his smooth 
spirit. 

He was, in every respect, a most worthy man, 
truthful, honest, temperate, and, I need not say, 
frugal ; and he had no bad habits, — perhaps he 
never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor 
did he lack the knack of the Yankee race. He 
could make a shoe, or build a house, or doctor a 
cow ; but it never seemed to him, in this brief 
existence, worth while to do any of these things. 
He was an excellent angler, but he rarely fished ; 
partly because of the shortness of days, partly 
on account of the uncertainty of bites, but prin- 
cipally because the trout brooks were all arranged 
lengthwise and ran over so much ground. But 
no man liked to look at a string of trout better 
than he did, and he was willing to sit down in 
a sunny place and talk about trout-fishing half a 
day at a time, and he would talk pleasantly and 
well too, though his wife might be continually 
interrupting him by a call for firewood. 

I should not do justice to his own idea of him- 
self if I did not add that he was most respect- 
ably connected, and that he had a justifiable, 



252 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

though feeble pride in his family. It helped his 
self-respect, which no ignoble circumstances 
could destroy. He was, as must appear by this 
time, a most intelligent man, and he was a well- 
informed man ; that is to say, he read the weekly 
newspapers when he could get them, and he had 
the average country information about Beecher 
and Greeley and the Prussian war, (" Napoleon 
is gettin' on 't, ain't he ? ") and the general pros- 
pect of the election campaigns. Indeed, he was 
warmly, or rather luke-warmly, interested in poli- 
tics. He liked to talk about the inflated cur- 
rency, and it seemed plain to him that his con- 
dition would somehow be improved if we could 
get to a specie basis. He was, in fact, a little 
troubled by the national debt ; it seemed to press 
on him somehow, while his own never did. He 
exhibited more animation over the affairs of the 
government than he did over his own, — an evi- 
dence at once of his disinterestedness and his 
patriotism. He had been an old abolitionist, and 
was strong on the rights of free labor, though he 
did not care to exercise his privilege much. Of 
course he had the proper contempt for the poor 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 253 

whites down South. I never saw a person with 
more correct notions on such a variety of subjects. 
He was perfectly willing that churches, (being 
himself a member,) and Sunday-schools, and 
missionary enterprises should go on ; in fact, I 
do not believe he ever opposed anything in his 
life. No one was more willing to vote town taxes 
and road-repairs and schoolhouses than he. If 
you could call him spirited at all, he was public- 
spirited. 

And with all this he was never very well ; he 
had, from boyhood, " enjoyed poor health." You 
would say he was not a man who would ever 
catch anything, not even an epidemic ; but he 
was a person whom diseases would be likely to 
overtake, even the slowest of slow fevers. And 
he was n't a man to shake off anything. And 
yet sickness seemed to trouble him no more than 
poverty. He was not discontented ; he never 
grumbled. I am not sure but he relished a 
" spell of sickness " in haying-time. 

An admirably balanced man, who accepts the 
world as it is, and evidently lives on the experi- 
ence of others. I have never seen a man with 



254 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

less envy, or more cheerfulness, or so contented 
with as little reason for being so. The only draw- 
back to his future is that rest beyond the grave 
will not be much change for him, and he has no 
works to follow him. 



III. 

This Yankee philosopher, who, without being 
a Brahmin, had, in an uncongenial atmosphere, 
reached the perfect condition of Nirvana, re- 
minded us all of the ancient sages ; and we 
queried whether a world that could produce such 
as he, and could, beside, lengthen a man's years 
to one hundred and thirteen, could fairly be called 
an old and worn-out world, having long passed 
the stage of its primeval poetry and simplicity. 
Many an Eastern dervish has, I think, got immor- 
tality upon less laziness and resignation than this 
temporary sojourner in Massachusetts. It is a 
common notion that the world (meaning the 
people in it) has become tame and common- 
place, lost its primeval freshness and epigram- 
matic point. Mandeville, in his argumentative 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 2$$ 

way, dissents from this entirely. He says that 
the world is more complex, varied, and a thousand 
times as interesting as it was in what we call its 
youth, and that it is as fresh, as individual, and 
capable of producing odd and eccentric charac- 
ters as ever. He thought the creative vim had 
not in any degree abated, that both the types of 
men and of nations are as sharply stamped and 
defined as ever they were. 

Was there ever, he said, in the past, any figure 
more clearly cut and freshly minted than the 
Yankee ? Had the Old World anything to show 
more positive and uncompromising in all the 
elements of character than the Englishman ? 
And if the edges of these were being rounded 
off, was there not developing in the extreme West 
a type of men different from all preceding, which 
the world could not yet define ? He believed 
that the production of original types was simply 
infinite. 

Herbert urged that he must at least admit that 
there was a freshness of legend and poetry in 
what we call the primeval peoples that is wanting 
now ; the mythic period is gone, at any rate. 



256 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



Mandeville could not say about the myths. 
We could n't tell what interpretation succeeding 
ages would put upon our lives and history and 
literature when they have become remote and 
shadowy. But we need not go to antiquity for 
epigrammatic wisdom, or for characters as racy 
of the fresh earth as those handed down to us 
from the dawn of history. He would put Ben- 
jamin Franklin against any of the sages of the 
mythic or the classic period. He would have 
been perfectly at home in ancient Athens, as 
Socrates would have been in modern Boston. 
There might have been more heroic characters 
at the siege of Troy than Abraham Lincoln, but 
there was not one more strongly marked individ- 
ually ; not one his superior in what we call pri- 
meval craft and humor. He was just the man, 
if he could not have dislodged Priam by a writ 
of ejectment, to have invented the wooden horse, 
and then to have made Paris the hero of some 
ridiculous story that would have set all Asia in a 
roar. 

Mandeville said further, that as to poetry, he 
did not know much about that, and there was not 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 2$? 

much he cared to read except parts of Shake- 
speare and Homer, and passages of Milton. But 
it did seem to him that we had men nowadays, 
who could, if they would give their minds to it, 
manufacture in quantity the same sort of epi- 
grammatic sayings and legends that our scholars 
were digging out of the Orient. He did not 
know why Emerson in antique setting was not 
as good as Saadi. Take for instance, said Man- 
deville, such a legend as this, and how easy it 
would be to make others like it: — 

The son of an Emir had red hair, of which he 
was ashamed, and wished to dye it. But his 
father said : " Nay, my son, rather behave in such 
a manner that all fathers shall wish their sons 
had red hair!' 

This was too absurd. Mandeville had gone too 
far, except in the opinion of Our Next Door, who 
declared that an imitation was just as good as 
an original, if you could not detect it. But Her- 
bert said that the closer an imitation is to an 
original, the more unendurable it is. But nobody 
could tell exactly why. 

The Fire-Tender said that we are imposed on 



258 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



by forms. The nuggets of wisdom that are dug 
out of the Oriental and remote literatures would 
often prove to be only commonplace if stripped 
of their quaint setting. If you give an Oriental 
twist to some of our modern thought its value 
would be greatly enhanced for many people. 
.) I have seen those, said the Mistress, who seem 
to prefer dried fruit to fresh ; but I like the 
strawberry and the peach of each season, and 
for me the last is always the best. 

Even the Parson admitted that there were no 
signs of fatigue or decay in the creative energy 
of the world ; and if it is a question of Pagans, 
he preferred Mandeville to Saadi. 




~VA 




T happened, or rather, to tell the truth, 
4 it was contrived, — for I have waited 
V^^l too long for things to turn up to have 
much faith in " happen," — that we who have 
sat by this hearthstone before should all be 
together on Christmas eve. There was a splen- 
did backlog of hickory just beginning to burn with 
a glow that promised to grow more fiery till long 
past midnight, which would have needed no 
apology in a loggers' camp, — not so much as 
the religion of which a lady (in a city which 
shall be nameless) said, " If you must have a 
religion, this one will do nicely." 

There was not much conversation, as is apt to 
be the case when people come together who have 



26o BACKLOG STUDIES. 

a great deal to say, and are intimate enough to 
permit the freedom of silence. It was Mande- 
ville who suggested that we read something, and 
the Young Lady, who was in a mood to enjoy 
her own thoughts, said, " Do." And finally it 
came about that the Fire-Tender, without more 
resistance to the urging than was becoming, went 
to his library, and returned with a manuscript, 
from which he read the story of 

MY UNCLE IN INDIA. 

Not that it is my uncle, let me explain. It is 
Polly's uncle, as I very well know, from the many 
times she has thrown him up to me, and is liable 
so to do at any moment. Having small expecta- 
tions myself, and having wedded Polly when they 
were smaller, I have come to feel the full force, 
the crushing weight, of her lightest remark about 
" My Uncle in India." The words as I write 
them convey no idea of the tone in which they 
fall upon my ears. I think it is the only fault of 
that estimable woman, that she has an uncle in 
India, and does not let him quietly remain there. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 26 1 

I feel quite sure that if I had an uncle in Botany- 
Bay, I should never, never throw him up to Polly 
in the way mentioned. If there is any jar in our 
quiet life, he is the cause of it ; all along of pos- 
sible "expectations" on the one side calculated 
to overawe the other side not having expecta- 
tions. And yet I know that if her uncle in India 
were this night to roll a barrel of " India's golden 
sands," as I feel that he any moment may do, 
into our sitting-room, at Polly's feet, that charm- 
ing wife, who is more generous than the month 
of May, and who has no thought but for my com- 
fort in two worlds, would straightway make it 
over to me, to have and to hold, if I could lift it, 
forever and forever. And that makes it more 
inexplicable that she, being a woman, will con- 
tinue to mention him in the way she does. 

In a large and general way I regard uncles as 
not out of place in this transitory state of exist- 
ence. They stand for a great many possible 
advantages. They are liable to "tip" you at 
school, they are resources in vacation, they come 
grandly in play about the holidays, at which sea- 
son my heart always did warm towards them 



262 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

with lively expectations, which were often turned 
into golden solidities ; and then there is always 
the prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, that uncles 
are mortal, and, in their timely taking off, may 
prove as generous in the will as they were in the 
deed. And there is always this redeeming possi- 
bility in a niggardly uncle. Still there must be 
something wrong in the character of the uncle 
per se, or all history would not agree that nepo- 
tism is such a dreadful thing. 

But, to return from this unnecessary digression, 
I am reminded that the charioteer of the patient 
year has brought round the holiday time. It 
has been a growing year, as most years are. It is 
very pleasant to see how the shrubs in our little 
patch of ground widen and thicken and bloom at 
the right time, and to know that the great trees 
have added a layer to their trunks. To be sure, 
our garden, — which I planted under Polly's direc- 
tions, with seeds that must have been patented, 
and I forgot to buy the right of, for they are 
mostly still waiting the final resurrection, — gave 
evidence that it shared in the misfortune of the 
Fall, and was never an Eden from which one 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 263 

would have required to have been driven. It was 
the easiest garden to keep the neighbors' pigs and 
hens out of I ever saw. If its increase was small, 
its temptations were smaller, and that is no little 
recommendation in this world of temptations. 
But, as a general thing, everything has grown, 
except our house. That little cottage, over which 
Polly presides with grace enough to adorn a pal- 
ace, is still small outside and smaller inside ; and 
if it has an air of comfort and of neatness, and its 
rooms are cosey and sunny by day and cheerful 
by night, and it is bursting with books, and not 
unattractive with modest pictures on the walls, 
which we think do well enough until my uncle — ■ 
(but never mind my uncle, now), — and if, in the 
long winter evenings, when the largest lamp is 
lit, and the chestnuts glow in embers, and the kid 
turns on the spit, and the house-plants are green 
and flowering, and the ivy glistens in the fire- 
light, and Polly sits with that contented, far-away 
look in her eyes that I like to see, her fingers 
busy upon one of those cruel mysteries which 
have delighted the sex since Penelope, and I read 
in one of my fascinating law-books, or perhaps 



264 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

regale ourselves with a taste of Montaigne, — if 
all this is true, there are times when the cottage 
seems small ; though I can never find that Polly- 
thinks so, except when she sometimes says that 
she does not know where she should bestow her 
uncle in it, if he should suddenly come back from 
India. 

There it is, again. I sometimes think that my 
wife believes her uncle in India to be as large as 
two ordinary men ; and if her ideas of him are 
any gauge of the reality, there is no place in the 
town large enough for him except the Town Hall. 
She probably expects him to come with his bun- 
galow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and his 
elephants, and his retinue of servants, and his 
principalities, and his powers, and his ha — 
(no, not* that), and his chow-chow, and his — I 
scarcely know what besides. 

Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking 
cold night, a placid, calm, swingeing cold night. 
Out-doors had gone into a general state of crys- 
tallization. The snow-fields were like the vast 
Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on, and lay 
sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christ- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 265 

masy, and all the crystals on the trees and bushes 
hung glistening, as if ready, at a breath of air, to 
break out into metallic ringing, like a million 
silver joy-bells. I mentioned the conceit to Polly, 
as we stood at the window, and she said it re- 
minded her of Jean Paul. She is a woman of 
most remarkable discernment. 

Christmas is a great festival at our house in a 
small way. Among the many delightful customs 
we did not inherit from our Pilgrim Fathers, 
there is none so pleasant as that of giving pres- 
ents at this season. It is the most exciting time 
of the year. No one is too rich to receive some- 
thing, and no one too poor to give a trifle. And 
in the act of giving and receiving these tokens of 
regard, all the world is kin for once, and brighter 
for this transient glow of generosity. Delightful 
custom ! Hard is the lot of childhood that knows 
nothing of the visits of Kriss Kringle, or the 
stockings hung by the chimney at night ; and 
cheerless is any age that is not brightened by 
some Christmas gift, however humble. What a 
mystery of preparation there is in the preceding 
days, what planning and plottings of surprises! 



266 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Polly and I keep up the custom in our simple 
way, and great is the perplexity to express the 
greatest amount of affection with a limited outlay. 
For the excellence of a gift lies in its appropriate- 
ness rather than in its value. As we stood by 
the window that night, we wondered what we 
should receive this year, and indulged in I know 
not what little hypocrisies and deceptions. 

" I wish," said Polly, " that my uncle in India 
would send me a camel's-hair shawl, or a string 
of pearls, each as big as the end of my thumb." 

"Or a white cow, which would give golden 
milk, that would make butter worth seventy-five 
cents a pound," I added, as we drew the curtains, 
and turned to our chairs before the open fire. 

It is our custom on every Christmas eve — as I 
believe I have somewhere said, or if I have not, I 
say it again, as the member from Erin might re- 
mark — to read one of Dickens's Christmas stories. 
And this night, after punching the fire until it 
sent showers of sparks up the chimney, I read the 
opening chapter of " Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings," in 
my best manner, and handed the book to Polly to 
continue ; for I do not so much relish reading 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 267 

aloud the succeeding stories of Mr. Dickens's 
annual budget, since he wrote them, as men go 
to war in these days, by substitute. And Polly 
read on, in her melodious voice, which is almost 
as pleasant to me as the Wasser-fluth of Schubert, 
which she often plays at twilight ; and I looked 
into the fire, unconsciously constructing stories 
of my own out of the embers. And her voice 
still went on, in a sort of running accompaniment 
to my airy or fiery fancies. 

"'Sleep?" said Polly, stopping, with what 
seemed to me a sort of crash, in which all the 
castles tumbled into ashes. 

" Not in the least," I answered brightly ; " never 
heard anything more agreeable." And the read- 
ing flowed on and on and on, and I looked 
steadily into the fire, the fire, fire, fi — 

Suddenly the door opened, and into our cosey 
parlor walked the most venerable personage I 
ever laid eyes on, who saluted me with great 
dignity. Summer seemed to have burst into the 
room, and I was conscious of a puff of Oriental 
airs, and a delightful, languid tranquillity. I was 
not surprised that the figure before me was clad 



268 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

in full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose 
robe, girt about the middle with a rich shawl. 
Followed him a swart attendant, who hastened to 
spread a rug upon which my visitor sat down, 
with great gravity, as I am informed they do in 
farthest Ind. The slave then filled the bowl of a 
long-stemmed chibouk, and, handing it to his 
master, retired behind him and began to fan him 
with the most prodigious palm-leaf I ever saw. 
Soon the fumes of the delicate tobacco of Persia 
pervaded the room, like some costly aroma which 
you cannot buy, now the entertainment of the 
Arabian Nights is discontinued. 

Looking through the window I saw, if I saw 
anything, a palanquin at our door, and attendant 
on it four dusky, half-naked bearers, who did not 
seem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they 
jumped about on the snow crust, and I could see 
them shiver and shake in the keen air. Oho ! 
thought I, this, then, is my uncle from India ! 
1 "Yes, it is," now spoke my visitor extraordi- 
nary, in a gruff, harsh voice. 

" I think I have heard Polly speak of you," I 
rejoined, in an attempt to be civil, for I did n't like 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 269 

his face any better than I did his voice, — a red, 
fiery, irascible kind of face. 

" Yes, I 've come over to — O Lord, — quick, 
Jamsetzee, lift up that foot, — take care. There, 
Mr. Trimings, if that 's your name, get me a glass 
of brandy, stiff." \ 

I got him our little apothecary-labelled bottle 
and poured out enough to preserve a whole can 
of peaches. My uncle took it down without a 
wink, as if it had been water, and seemed relieved. 
It was a very pleasant uncle to have at our fire- 
side on Christmas eve, I felt. 

At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee handed 
me a parcel which I saw was directed to Polly, 
which I untied, and lo ! the most wonderful cam- 
el's-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I imme- 
diately drew it through my finger-ring, and so 
large that I saw it would entirely cover our little 
room if I spread it out ; a dingy red color, but 
splendid in appearance from the little white hie- 
roglyphic worked in one corner, which is always 
worn outside, to show that it cost nobody knows 
how many thousands of dollars. 

"A Christmas trifle for Polly. I have come 



270 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

home — as I was saying when that confounded 
twinge took me — to settle down ; and I intend 
to make Polly my heir, and live at my ease and 
enjoy life. Move that leg a little, Jamsetzee." 

I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly 
would be delighted to see her dear uncle, and as 
for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n't know 
any one with a greater capacity for that than 
she. 

"That depends," said the gruff old smoker, 
" how I like ye. A fortune, scraped up in forty 
years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown away in a min- 
ute. But what a house this is to live in!" the 
uncomfortable old relative went on, throwing a 
contemptuous glance round the humble cottage. 
" Is this all of it ? " 

" In the winter it is all of it," I said, flushing 
up; "but in the summer, when the doors and 
windows are open, it is as large as anybody's 
house. And," I went on, with some warmth, "it 
was large enough just before you came in, and 
pleasant enough. And besides," I said, rising 
into indignation, " you cannot get anything much 
better in this city short of eight hundred dollars 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 2J\ 

a. year, payable first days of January, April, July, 
and October, in advance, and my salary — " 

" Hang your salary, and confound your impu- 
dence and your seven-by-nine hovel ! Do you 
think you have anything to say about the use of 
my money, scraped up in forty years in Ingy ? 
Things have got to be changed ! " he burst 
out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on the 
sideboard. 

I should think they were. Even as I looked 
into the little fireplace it enlarged, and there was 
an enormous grate, level with the floor, glowing 
with sea-coal ; and a magnificent mantel carved 
in oak, old and brown ; and over it hung a land- 
scape, wide, deep, summer in the foreground with 
all the gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and be- 
yond hills of blue and far mountains lying in rosy 
light. I held my breath as I looked down the 
marvellous perspective. Looking round for a 
second, I caught a glimpse of a Hindoo at each 
window, who vanished as if they had been 
whisked off by enchantment ; and the close 
walls that shut us in fled away. Had cohe- 
sion and gravitation given out ? Was it the 



272 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

"Great Consummation" of the year 18 — ? It 
was all like the swift transformation of a dream, 
and I pinched my arm to make sure that I was 
not the subject of some diablerie. 

The little house was gone ; but that I scarcely 
minded, for I had suddenly come into possession 
of my wife's castle in Spain. I sat in a spacious, 
lofty apartment, furnished with a princely mag- 
nificence. Rare pictures adorned the walls, stat- 
ues looked down from deep niches, and over 
both the dark ivy of England ran and drooped 
in graceful luxuriance. Upon the heavy tables 
were costly, illuminated volumes ; luxurious chairs 
and ottomans invited to easy rest ; and upon the 
ceiling Aurora led forth all the flower-strewing 
daughters of the dawn in brilliant frescos. 
Through the open doors my eyes wandered 
into magnificent apartment after apartment. 
There to the south, through folding-doors, was 
the splendid library, with groined roof, colored 
light streaming in through painted windows, high 
shelves stowed with books, old armor hanging on 
the walls, great carved oaken chairs about a solid 
oaken table, and beyond a conservatory of flowers 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 273 

and plants with a fountain springing in the cen- 
tre, the splashing of whose waters I could hear. 
Through the open windows I looked upon a lawn, 
green with close-shaven turf, set with ancient 
trees, and variegated with parterres of summer 
plants in bloom. It was the month of June, and 
the smell of roses was in the air. 

I might have thought it only a freak of my 
fancy, but there by the fireplace sat a stout, red- 
faced, puffy-looking man, in the ordinary dress of 
an English gentleman, whom I had no difficulty 
in recognizing as my uncle from India. 

" One wants a fire every day in the year in this 
confounded climate," remarked that amiable old 
person, addressing no one in particular. 

I had it on my lips to suggest that I trusted 
the day would come when he would have heat 
enough to satisfy him, in permanent supply. I 
wish now that I had. 

I think things had changed. For now into 
this apartment, full of the morning sunshine, 
came sweeping with the air of a countess born, 
and a maid of honor bred, and a queen in expec- 
tancy, my Polly, stepping with that lofty grace 



274 BACKLOG STUDIES* 

which I always knew she possessed, but which 
she never had space to exhibit in our little cot- 
tage, dressed with that elegance and richness 
that I should not have deemed possible to the 
most Dutch duchess that ever lived, and, giving 
me a complacent nod of recognition, approached 
her uncle, and said in her smiling, cheery way, 
" How is the dear uncle this morning ? " And, 
as she spoke, she actually bent down and kissed 
his horrid old cheek, red-hot with currie and 
brandy and all the biting pickles I can neither 
eat nor name, — kissed him, and I did not turn 
into stone. 

" Comfortable as the weather will permit, my 
darling ! " — and again I did not turn into stone. 

" Would n't uncle like to take a drive this 
charming morning ? " Polly asked. 

Uncle finally grunted out his willingness, and 
Polly swept away again to prepare for the drive, 
taking no more notice of me than if I had been 
a poor assistant office lawyer on a salary. And 
soon the carriage was at the door, and my uncle, 
bundled up like a mummy, and the charming 
Polly drove gayly away. 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



275 



How pleasant it is to be married rich, I thought, 
as I arose and strolled into the library, where 
everything was elegant and prim and neat, with 
no scraps of paper and piles of newspapers or evi- 
dences of literary slovenness on the table, and no 
books in attractive disorder, and where I seemed 
to see the legend staring at me from all the walls, 
" No smoking." So I uneasily lounged out of 
the house. And a magnificent house it was, 
a palace, rather, that seemed to frown upon and 
bully insignificant me with its splendor, as I 
walked away from it towards town. 

And why town ? There was no use of doing 
anything at the dingy office. Eight hundred 
dollars a year ! It would n't keep Polly in 
gloves, let alone dressing her for one of those 
fashionable entertainments to which we went 
night after night. And so, after a weary day 
with nothing in it, I went home to dinner, to 
find my uncle quite chirruped up with his drive, 
and Polly regnant, sublimely engrossed in her 
new world of splendor, a dazzling object of admi- 
ration to me, but attentive and even tender to that 
hypochondriacal, gouty old subject from India. 



276 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

Yes, a magnificent dinner, with no end of ser- 
vants, who seemed to know that I could n't have 
paid the wages of one of them, and plate and 
courses endless. I say, a miserable dinner, on 
the edge of which I seemed to sit by permission 
of somebody, like an invited poor relation, who 
wishes he had sent a regret, and longing for some 
of those nice little dishes that Polly used to set 
before me with beaming face, in the dear old 
days. 

And after dinner, and proper attention to the 
comfort for the night of our benefactor, there was 
the Blibgims's party. No long, confidential inter- 
views, as heretofore, as to what she should wear 
and what I should wear, and whether it would do 
to wear it again. And Polly went in one coach, 
and I in another. No crowding into the hired 
hack, with all the delightful care about tumbling 
dresses, and getting there in good order ; and no 
coming home together to our little cosey cottage, 
in a pleasant, excited state of " flutteration," and 
sitting down to talk it all over, and " Was n't it 
nice ? " and " Did I look as well as anybody ? " 
and " Of course you did to me," and all that non- 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 2JJ 

sense. We lived in a grand way now, and had 
our separate establishments and separate plans, 
and I used to think that a real separation 
could n't make matters much different. Not 
that Polly meant to be any different, or was, at 
heart ; but, you know, she was so much absorbed 
in her new life of splendor, and perhaps I was a 
little old-fashioned. 

I don't wonder at it now, as I look back. There 
was an army of dressmakers to see, and a world 
of shopping to do, and a houseful of servants to 
manage, and all the afternoon for calls, and her 
dear, dear friend, with the artless manners and 
merry heart of a girl, and the dignity and grace 
of a noble woman, — the dear friend who lived in 
the house of the Seven Gables, to consult about 
all manner of important things. I could not, upon 
my honor, see that there was any place for me, 
and I went my own way, not that there was 
much comfort in it, 

And then I would rather have had charge of 
a hospital ward than take care of that uncle. 
Such coddling as he needed, such humoring of 
whims. And I am bound to say that Polly 



278 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

could n't have been more dutiful to him if he 
had been a Hindoo idol. She read to him and 
talked to him, and sat by him with her embroid- 
ery, and was patient with his crossness, and 
wearied herself, that I could see, with her 
devoted ministrations. 

I fancied sometimes she was tired of it, and 
longed for the old homely simplicity. I was. 
Nepotism had no charms for me. There was 
nothing that I could get Polly that she had 
not. I could surprise her with no little deli- 
cacies or trifles, delightedly bought with money 
saved for the purpose. There was no more 
coming home weary with office work and being 
met at the door with that warm, loving welcome 
which the King of England could not buy. There 
was no long evening when we read alternately 
from some favorite book, or laid our deep house- 
keeping plans, rejoiced in a good bargainor made 
light of a poor one, and were contented and 
merry with little. I recalled with longing my 
little den, where in the midst of the literary dis- 
order I love, I wrote those stories for the Antartic 
which Polly, if nobody else, liked to read. There 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 279 

was no comfort for me in my magnificent library. 
We were all rich and in splendor, and our uncle 
had come from India. I wished, saving his 
soul, that the ship that brought him over had 
foundered of! Barnegat Light. It would always 
have been a tender and regretful memory to both 
of us. And how sacred is the memory of such a 
loss ! 

Christmas ? What delight could I have in 
long solicitude and ingenious devices touching a 
gift for Polly within my means, and hitting the 
border line between her necessities and her ex- 
travagant fancy ? A drove of white elephants 
would n't have been good enough for her now, if 
each one carried a castle on his back. 

" — and so they were married, and in their 
snug cottage lived happy ever after." — It was 
Polly's voice, as she closed the book. 

" There, I don't believe you have heard a word 
of it," she said, half complainingly. 

"O yes, I have," I cried, starting up and 
giving the fire a jab with the poker; "I heard 
every word of it, except a few at the close. I 
was thinking " — I stopped, and looked round. 



280 BACKLOG STUDIES. 

" Why, Polly, where is the camel's-hair shawl ? " 

" Camel's-hair fiddlestick ! Now I know you 
have been asleep for an hour." 

And, sure enough, there was n't any camel's- 
hair shawl there, nor any uncle, nor were there 
any Hindoos at our windows. 

And then I told Polly all about it ; how her 
uncle came back, and we were rich and lived in a 
palace and had no end of money, but she did n't 
seem to have time to love me in it all, and all the 
comfort of the little house was blown away as by 
the winter wind. And Polly vowed, half in tears, 
that she hoped her uncle never would come back, 
and she wanted nothing that we had not, and she 
would n't exchange our independent comfort and 
snug house, no, not for anybody's mansion. And 
then and there we made it all up, in a manner 
too particular for me to mention ; and I never, to 
this day, heard Polly allude to My Uncle in India. 

And then, as the clock struck eleven, we each 
produced from the place where we had hidden 
them the modest Christmas gifts we had pre- 
pared for each other, and what surprise there was ! 
" Just the thing I needed." And, " It 's perfectly 



BACKLOG STUDIES. 



28r 



lovely." And, " You should n't have done it." 
And, then, a question I never will answer, " Ten ? 
fifteen ? five ? twelve ? " " My dear, it cost eight 
hundred dollars, for I have put my whole year 
into it, and I wish it was a thousand times 
better." 

And so, when the great iron tongue of the city 
bell swept over the snow the twelve strokes that 
announced Christmas day, if there was any- 
where a happier home than ours, I am glad of 
it! 




NOV 23 1900 



